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 (1-6).

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 35 people) of very talented, funny, and creative individuals looking for a Full Stack Web 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. Communication between the web-based controller and the game running on the console all passes through server infrastructure that we develop and operate. You will join our web and server infrastructure team to help with multiple web-based projects including internal tools, the controller application (jackbox.tv), our game server, and much more.

For this position we are looking for generalists who have a good understanding of the whole web application stack -- frontend and backend -- as well as experience working in a production environment. We don’t expect you to be an expert in everything, but you should feel very comfortable with at least one part of the stack.

You should...

• Write clean, elegant code that can be easily understood by fellow software engineers
• Be well-versed in Javascript as well as at least one major backend programming language (which may very well be Javascript.)
• Have written production code for either the frontend or backend of an application. Ideally both.
• Have an understanding of core software engineering concepts: data structures, design patterns, algorithms, etc.
• Be professional, responsible, dedicated, friendly, flexible, patient, respectful, and enthusiastic.
• Have the ability to work independently or as part of a team, depending on the nature of the work you are doing.

And it would be nice if you also have…

• Knowledge of (or expertise in) Go
• Experience working with cloud-based infrastructure (ideally AWS.)
• An understanding of game mechanics and intuition for what makes a game successful
• 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 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. We will not evaluate applications that do not include the following:

• 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 and liking games isn’t required for the job. 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!