Software Engineer Co-op/Intern, A Thinking Ape
May-Aug 2025
More information about location
Developer of social mobile video games
Job no longer available
Developer of social mobile video games
21-100 employees
Job no longer available
More information about location
21-100 employees
Company mission
To build and create online games, communities and technologies that change how people socialize and play on mobile devices.
Role
Who you are
- You are a tech generalist, a full stack engineer with the desire to work on both client and server side implementations of entire features
- Strong understanding of object-oriented design, data structures and algorithms
- You communicate your thoughts and ideas clearly in code and in writing
- You have an interest in and play mobile gaming products
- Be self motivated, take pride in your work and enjoy huge amounts of ownership
- Set aside your ego and have wonderful arguments with your coworkers in order to create something better than any one person could individually
- Challenge your own assumptions and use data to make decisions whenever possible
- Be passionate about teaching others what you know and continuing your own growth every day
- Not be afraid to fail–you experiment and learn from your mistakes
What the job involves
- As a Software Development Engineer Co-op, you will be helping build our live mobile games, including Single City, Kingdoms of Heckfire, and Party in my Dorm. as well as the tools and infrastructure needed to run these massively multiplayer online experiences
- You will work closely with artists and designers to grow our games from the population of a city to the population of an entire country. You will design services used by a large number of concurrent users, and implement scalable, reliable and maintainable technologies for both client and server
- You will have a major impact on the end product, and will be involved in every aspect of its development. Millions of people will use what you create
- You will be responsible for implementing features, systems, and tools for our games in live operation. The game backends are built with a Django + MySQL server architecture, while the frontend clients are built using Unity or native iOS/Android depending on the product. You will also:
- Build entire features from front-end client code to back-end server support. Many of our engineers are full stack!
- Become involved in every aspect of product development, from design to implementation to playtests to metrics analysis
- Construct systems that let everyone at the company deploy to our distributed backend without worry
- Create tools to automate and optimize processes across disciplines. These might be adding additional player management tools for our community team, data pipeline optimizations for our game designers, or even content pipelines for our art team
- Past co-ops have worked on.
- Guild management improvements like the ability to invite people, open clubs that players can join without approval, better club search, and other tools to keep our most active players engaged
- Implemented a scalable group leaderboard event system full stack. The system guarantees consistency and availability while dozens of players try to contribute progress to their group frequently
- Revamped data deploy tool to enable multiple game designers to work simultaneously
- Setup metrics tracking and funnel analysis and experimented with different UI polishes to improve retention
- Worked on upgrading our data pipeline: processing data and creating different data representations and visualizations to help ATA to make marketing and product decisions
- Revamped the realm map overview to include real time positions of ongoing marches, key locations on the map and user bookmarked pins!
- Implemented the entire stack for our Second Builder subscription purchase, which included interfacing with both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, as well as client support
- Optimized particle systems in-game to significantly reduce peak memory usage
- Developed leaderboard-assigned classes for Shrines to grant players additional perks
Application process
- Resume + screening questions review
- Two 30-minute technical interviews, back to back with our engineers - expect to write code!
- 30-minute Team Fit interview
- Offer
Our take
Mobile video games have existed since smartphones first hit the market, often being associated with single-player novelty games aimed to pass the time. Whilst many mobile developers have attempted to make games that emulate the social communities that console and PC multi-player games host, these generally do not succeed due to lacking sufficient social infrastructure.
A Thinking Ape develops video games for mobile devices, focusing on integrating social features that facilitate communities which are commonplace on other video game platforms. The company's games include Kingdoms of Heckfire, Party in my Dorm, and Casino X, each of which is free-to-play with in-game purchases and revolve around independent in-game social features.
Whilst A Thinking Ape is not the first developer to produce such games for mobile, many of its competitors have stuck to lazy ports from PC and console. The company instead makes the mobile platform its priority, allowing it to fill a nice gap in the market. Though not immune from the industry woes that saw layoffs across gaming in recent years, the company has appeared positive throughout restructuring and there's no reason it won't have a bright future.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-2% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Health and dental
- Unlimited sick days, flexible scheduling and work from home options
- Our kitchen is always stocked with a wide variety of snacks and every Wednesday we provide catered lunch
- Professional development funding, regular lunch and learns, annual game jams and bi-weekly 1:1s with team leads
- Monthly “Birthiversaries”, ad-hoc game tournaments and pop-up team events. Oh, and our summer and holiday parties? They’re epic!
- On-site yoga sessions, a monthly massage clinic and our company-sponsored hockey and dodgeball teams. (Go Rampage!)
Company values
- Ownership - we take complete ownership of our work and act in the best interests of the company. We’re the type of people who care - a lot. It’s never “not my job”
- Have wonderful arguments - we’re comfortable thinking deeply about important issues and care enough to respectfully challenge decisions when we disagree. Mutual respect and checked egos allow for productive debate and better outcomes than any we would have achieved individually
- The best ideas win - we want everyone involved in problem-solving, regardless of their position. We frequently seek feedback from each other and our players in order to challenge our assumptions and make data-driven decisions when possible
- Keep growing - we’re always building and improving our skills and processes. We understand that when we learn, we see exponential improvement in ourselves, our products, and our company. We’re never finished learning
- We’re Remote - while our HQ is in Vancouver, BC, we are currently open to you working from anywhere in Canada and will support you with relocation if required
Company HQ
West End, Vancouver, BC
Articles
Leadership
Eric Diep
(Founder)Also Founder at manifold.xyz. Graduate in Mathematics and Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo. Founded A Thinking Ape as CTO.
Tayber Voyer
(CEO)Joined the company in 2015 as Director of Product Management and Game Design. Was then VP of Product before becoming CEO in 2023. Former Producer at East Side Games.
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