Senior Foundational Tools Programmer

Guerrilla is looking for a Senior Foundational Tools Programmer to help architect and implement the next iteration of Decima Engine's Editor This role requires strong programming skills, solid architectural design experience for building frameworks and a passion for good user experiences.

Decima Engine

At Guerrilla, we're passionate about creating cutting-edge technology tailored to the needs of our games and our partners. That's why we built Decima: an award-winning, industry-leading engine designed from the ground up. Decima pushes modern hardware to its limits, delivering best-in-class graphics and performance. It also empowers teams with artist- and designer-friendly workflows, robust production planning tools, and advanced debuggers for programmers. We believe that the tools a studio uses are just as important as the games they create—and with Decima, we're setting the stage for innovation and creativity.

The Decima Editor is used in-house and externally by hundreds of artists and designers to develop extraordinary open world games It's a comprehensive native desktop application encompassing a 3D and 2D world editor, asset browser, node-based editors, a sequencer timeline, review tools, localization, and sound design pipelines.

The Tools Team is one of Guerrilla's Decima Engine teams and is the owner of the Decima Editor and its underlying technology stack. We tackle a wide variety of challenges to make the Engine easier and more effective to use, both for end users and tool developers throughout Guerrilla. To achieve this we design, develop, and maintain the foundation of the Decima Editor experience. We've built a comprehensive set of re-usable Editor Components and Editor Services. These components, together with our UI Framework and Editor Viewport, are commonly referred to as the Tools Framework.

We are proud of creating an innovative, powerful toolset and of supporting other teams of programmers, artists, and designers to achieve their vision

The Tools Framework is built around a set of reusable visual components and a set of background services. It empowers other programming teams to develop tools within the Decima Editor to support their discipline, project or product needs. 

The framework provides a lightning fast Asset Browser to find content, an Asset Indexer which has complete in memory map of object relations allowing for quick navigation and reasoning about content structure, a Data Model as the memory representation of all loaded and modified content, a transaction based Undo/Redo service, a flexible Attribute Editor and many, many more controls, components and services.

The Decima Control Framework allows building UI components to visualize and manipulate data. Combined with our layout and docking systems it allows us to dynamically structure the Editor based on discipline or users preferences. Our Editor UI is fast, simple and pretty by clever usage of Signed Distance Fields and a Tile Based Renderer. 

The Decima Editor Viewport is a common control used to preview and edit content using our 3D runtime, an embedded out-of-process version of the game. Having the game logic as part of the viewport allows users to edit content and directly play without loading a separate instance. It supports live content updates directly in our Viewports, and quickly replaces complex content hierarchies via Game Sync. 

The Tools team has a broad range of responsibilities. These can be designing and implementing entirely new workflows, improving current ones, or refactoring existing systems and frameworks, all to support making better games more easily. Some recent and upcoming examples include:

• Creating freeform content deformation tools used in 3D Viewports to allow artists to quickly and easily tailor assets to the look and feel of a specific game.
• Removing QT dependencies from our control framework to more tightly integrate it into our lowest level libraries to allow for tighter integration of our tools in our games and even remove platform boundaries when using our tools.
• Re-envision the scriptwriting workflow from a cumbersome word and spreadsheet-based process into using a single integrated tool that integrates seamlessly with script, cinematic and localization workflows.
• Architect the next iteration of Viewport integration to reduce dependencies on content loading and greatly improve content changes at world scale.
• Extending the feature set of terrain modifications, including paint tools, non-distructive procedural content generation and improved Gizmos in our World Editor.
• Making documentation easier to read and write by implementing a WYSIWYG editor and responsive, full-featured in-engine documentation reader.

Relevant videos:

• Creating a Tools Pipeline for Horizon Zero Dawn - GDC 2017 Video
• Scaling Tools for Millions of Assets for 'Horizon Forbidden West' - GDC 2023 Video
• Nodes and Native Code: DECIMA's Visual Programming for Every Discipline - GDC 2025 Video
• UIPainter: Tile-Based UI Rendering in One Draw Call - GDC 2024 Video (members only) and Slides

In this role, you will:

• Work in a team of software engineers, interact closely with artists and designers
• Contribute to content-authoring tools within a large, dynamic games studio
• Write high quality, maintainable code and elevate other people around you to do the same
• Establish requirements, design and implement changes to the Tools Framework to enable growth of the editors' feature set and the editor performance

To qualify for this position, we expect you to have/be:

• At least 4 years of DCC, GUI or Editor Framework or Viewport Tooling experience
• Experienced C++ programmer with strong software design and architecture skills
• Skilled in algorithms, software design & architecture, and debugging
• Comfortable working within a very large existing codebase and toolset
• An strong written & verbal communicator

Plusses:

Things that we consider as bonuses, but are not hard requirements include:

• Experience working on AAA game tools/pipelines
• Skilled in tools design, workflows and usability
• Experience working with Product Management and UX Designers
• An understanding of game development pipelines and production cycles

If you think you're up for the challenge, you can apply by hitting the "apply now" button. Be sure to submit:

• CV
• Cover Letter

If you have existing materials:

• C++ code sample that showcases your programming skills. Please include an overview.
• Demo material presenting your tools (video or screenshots and a short overview).

Please note: This position is based in our studio in the heart of Amsterdam. Guerrilla offers relocation and immigration support.

At Guerrilla, we believe that our team's varied backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives help us create games that resonate with a diverse audience.

As an equal opportunities employer, we strive to create an inclusive environment, empower employees and embrace diversity.

We encourage everyone to respond as we consider all candidates on the basis of their merit, unique strengths, and perspectives they will bring to the role.