$150k - $244k
Staff / Sr Staff Engineer - System SoftwareCategorySoftwareLocationSan Diego, CA ExperienceMore than 8 Years Work Expe.Job Description• Bring up new platform boards and verify the major functions independently• Regular s…
Engineering & IT · San Diego, CA
Game Developer jobs in San Diego, CA
Game developers build interactive experiences in engines like Unity and Unreal — writing gameplay systems, optimizing performance, and collaborating with artists and designers to ship playable worlds.
193
Open roles today
$34–$94/hr
Typical pay range
$126k
Median, full-time
12
Fresh in this list
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01
Open game developer roles
12 shown of 193 · sorted by freshness
modern application development, cloud, APIs, integrations, and AI-assisted software engineering. Key Responsibilities Lead, mentor, and develop a team of software engineers. Drive application architecture, technical desi…
$108.01k - $183.61k
the team and the Practice. Lead knowledge sharing sessions across the practice.Continuous Learning: Stay updated on the latest developments in ServiceNow and integrated technologies, tools, and industry trends. Enhance y…
environments. Forge is the engineering platform used to build, integrate, test, and operate Hivemind capabilities. It connects autonomy developers with the applications, services, compute, data, and workflows they need t…
$149.8k - $262.2k
Company DescriptionIt all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for e…
$149.8k - $262.2k
early and drive them to resolution, with a strong focus on reliability, scalability, and operability — leading failure-mode analysis, game days, and post-incident reviews for stateful systems.You will spend significant t…
$160k - $250k
Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. Job Description:Shield AI is seeking a Senior Engineer to help design, develop, and integrate a safety critical Run-Time Assurance (RTA) product. The Hivemind Foun…
$92.3k - $166.85k
submitting test status reports, Program Change Requests (PCR), and standard test reports, and performing PCR analysis as required. Developing standard SKL test procedures for new implemented Navy ECUs and providing techn…
$90k - $135k
Estimating Job Summary:The Audio Visual (A/V) Designer is the person who supports the sales and projects staff. The A/V Designer will develop design and engineering solutions for sales opportunities. The A/V Designer wil…
technical documentation, including test plans and procedures.Design configurations to support testing and prototyping of emerging systems. Develop troubleshooting guides and workaround documentation for system issues.Per…
DescriptionAt HDR, our employee-owners are fully engaged in creating a welcoming environment where each of us is valued and respected, a place where everyone is empowered to bring their authentic selves and novel ideas t…
$87.1k - $157.45k
and subject matter experts from the areas of systems engineering, hardware, firmware, RF front-end design, and signal processing. Developing software for a variety of microarchitectures, including DSP, ARM, or RISC-VDeve…
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What game developers earn in San Diego
Hourly first — that's how the offer arrives
| Experience | Hourly | Annual, full-time |
|---|---|---|
| Entry level | $34–$50 | $71k–$104k |
| Mid level | $50–$71 | $104k–$148k |
| Senior | $68–$94 | $142k–$195k |
Adjusted for the San Diego market from national ranges.
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What employers ask for
The skills these listings keep naming
Unity (C#) or Unreal (C++)Gameplay programming3D math (vectors, matrices)Performance profilingPhysics and animation systemsMultiplayer networking (a plus)Shaders and graphics basicsCollaboration with art and designIterating from playtest feedback
04
Interview questions worth rehearsing
With the thing the interviewer is actually listening for
Walk me through a gameplay system you built — movement, combat, inventory, anything.
Explain the architecture and how it survived design changes. Games iterate constantly, so flexible systems are the real skill being probed.
Your frame rate dropped below target. How do you find the cause?
Profile first — CPU versus GPU — then narrow to draw calls, scripts, physics, or garbage collection. Naming the actual profiler tools you use makes it credible.
Explain the difference between Update and FixedUpdate (or tick contexts in your engine).
Frame-dependent versus fixed-timestep logic, and why physics belongs in the fixed step. A quick example of a bug caused by mixing them up is a nice touch.
How do you handle a designer requesting a change that breaks your architecture?
Show that you serve the game: understand the intent, propose alternatives, and refactor when the design direction is real. Rigidity is a bigger flag than rework.
What would you consider when adding multiplayer to a single-player game?
Authority, state synchronization, latency compensation, and the honest answer that retrofitting networking is expensive. Scoping realism is the point.
Tell me about a game you shipped or finished — even a small one.
Finished matters more than ambitious. Talk about the last 20 percent: polish, bugs, cuts you made to actually release.
How do you use object pooling, and why?
Reusing objects to avoid allocation and garbage-collection spikes — bullets and effects are the classic case. Tie it to a frame-time problem you solved.
05
Resume tips that move the needle
For game developers specifically — generic advice costs you here
01
Link playable work — shipped titles, itch.io projects, or a portfolio reel; in games, the work is the resume.
02
Specify your engine and language depth (Unity/C#, Unreal/C++) and your specialty: gameplay, graphics, tools, or networking.
03
Name your specific contributions on team titles — 'built the save system and enemy AI' beats a credit line.
04
Include game jams and finished small projects; they prove you can complete things, which studios weight heavily.
05
Show performance work with numbers, such as frame-rate targets hit on specific hardware.
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Where this role goes
Typical progression
01
Junior Game Developer
02
Game Developer
03
Senior Game Developer
04
Lead Programmer
05
Technical Director
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