​​​​​​​Please read this whole job description before applying

Jackbox Games is best known for its rapidly expanding catalog of critically acclaimed party games including Quiplash, Drawful, Fibbage, You Don’t Know Jack and The Jackbox Party Packs (1-5).

We make party games where players interact with a game being displayed on a big screen using their phones or tablets as controllers. While our games are often played at home in small groups of 2-8 people, we also support large-scale games at events or via Twitch streaming where thousands of users can connect and interact.

We’re a small group (around 30 people) of very talented, funny, and creative individuals looking for a Front End Software Engineer to join our Chicago-based team.

Check out our website for more info about who we are and what we make. www.jackboxgames.com.

What’s the Job?

We have found our niche making games where players use the browser on their mobile devices as controllers, so although our games are distributed on PCs and consoles, the web-based “controller” application (jackbox.tv) is as central to the success of our games as the game applications themselves. We are looking for a Front End engineer to help us improve and add new games to jackbox.tv as well as several other web applications.

Responsibilities:

• Develop new features, implement controllers, and style components for new games in the jackbox.tv web application and other user-facing web apps.
• Build reusable code libraries and refactor the existing codebase to make development easier in the future
• Optimize applications for speed, stability, maintainability and compatibility
• Contribute to development of our web-based internal tools
• Find and resolve defects and other issues as they come up during development, working with both internal and external QA teams.
• Participate in prototyping and experimentation as we explore and develop new product ideas
• Participate in team project management activities such as code reviews, sprint planning, review, etc.
• Manage deployment of applications owned by your team including automated testing, creating builds and managing multiple deployment environments

Candidates Must…

• Have experience as a front-end engineer on a shipped web application.
• Have a deep and thorough understanding of the following:
  • modern javascript, including ES6 best practices
  • A modern javascript framework such as React or Vue
  • CSS

And it would be nice if you also have…

• An understanding of game mechanics and intuition for what makes a game successful
• A good aesthetic and understanding of UI/UX principles
• An understanding of what is involved in operating front-end applications. (DNS, CDN, CORS, etc.)
• Experience with Backbone/Marionette
• Great party game ideas

We only hire clever, kind and creative people who are willing to work hard. That said, we do not have a crunch-time culture and have shipped games for many years without expecting extended-hours from our employees. Jackbox Games is a group effort and you must work collaboratively. Everyone here shares a commitment to excellence and a desire to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere.

Jackbox Games is committed to providing employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, or disability.

Are there any perks?

• Competitive pay and benefits. 401(k) with matching. And we pay 100% of the cost of premiums for medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance for our employees. We also cover a really nice chunk of the cost of premiums for spouse/partner/dependent medical, dental and vision insurance. Paid parental leave.
• Casual dress and a flexible schedule. Come in a sweatshirt, jeans, whatever, like everyone else here.
• Creative work environment. We are lucky to work in a place that is full of talented and innovative folks. Although most hours the place is pretty quiet (we’re a focused bunch), this is punctuated with hilarious outbursts and general merriment, which makes a nice way to spend the day.
• Easy transportation. We’re very close to the “L” and the Halsted (#8) bus (right by the new Apple Store and Mega Whole Foods if that’s your kind of thing), and we have a transit FSA that allows you to dedicate pre-tax dollars to public transportation expenses.
• Free food. Every week, we stock our kitchen with free snacks.

Interested?

Great, we look forward to reading your application. Make sure you include:

• Your resume.
• A cover letter. You don't need to be a professional writer for this job (we have those) but communication is important so we weigh cover letters heavily. You can (and should) write more, but we won’t evaluate applicants that don’t at least answer these two questions:
  • Why you are interested in working at Jackbox Games?
  • What is your favorite game and why? There's no right answer. We mostly just want to know if you've read this far.

On the fence? If you're interested in the job but worried you aren't qualified, we encourage you to err on the side of applying. We'd hate to miss out on great candidates just because they're worried they don't check every box on the job description.

We know it is a time commitment to prepare an application and we respect that effort by thoughtfully reviewing every complete application and responding one way or the other. But that kind of thoughtful review means that it sometimes takes us a while to get back to applicants, so please be patient with us and no phone calls.

Thanks for your interest in Jackbox Games!