Description
Cloud Imperium Games is looking to add an experienced Lead Sound Designer to the CIG Audio team, based at Foundry 42 Ltd in Wilmslow, UK. This is strictly an in-house lead role, requiring previous senior duties and at least five years’ industry experience.
The ideal applicant will have high levels of ability in organisation, communication and critical reasoning. Experience of working closely with video game production is highly beneficial, as you’ll be expected to help prioritise tasks across the team and assist the Audio Director with managing workloads; to help make decisions that best serve the needs of the game from an audio perspective.
The successful candidate will be expected to have a high level of competence in creative and technical game sound design, ideally having worked in different middleware environments; and be able to communicate comfortably with the audio team across all sub-disciplines of sound design, dialogue and music. Experience working with marketing departments on sound for promotional material, preparing budgets and lining up resources, and engaging the likes of external composers/post-production houses, would be looked upon favourably.
This role will require some management and evaluation across the board, with the candidate having responsibility for evaluating and acquiring tools, booking selected outsourcers, co-ordinating with accounts, the IT department, etc. – engaging with the audio team to enable those you’re working alongside to perform at their peak.
As Star Citizen is very technical in nature you’ll be expected to understand and collaborate with other sound designers and audio programmers in driving progression in technical areas, and be comfortable in setting technical guidelines and communicating these internally. Knowing how sound design is carried out in-depth will prove valuable and you will probably have to get your hands dirty with sound design as and when required.
We are a studio based around a combination of Wwise and a modified version of Lumberyard. High levels of experience (ideally having shipped a title) in at least one of these will prove invaluable.
You should be looking at ways to impart your own high standards and ear for quality to other sound designers, enabling them to produce their best work first and foremost. This role is about raising the bar for everyone on the team, working with the Audio Director closely to ensure their vision for audio for the game is carried through to the rest of the team.
The sound of Star Citizen is being forged by a centralised core audio team where all members are encouraged to explore concepts and present ideas to their team mates. This team is a flat hierarchy where responsibility is distributed and you’re expected to be able to distribute work and collaborate in a way that’s compatible with this structure.
In depth experience of working on FPS titles will prove useful, and a love of space/science fiction always helps!
Please apply with a demo-reel/portfolio and any other material you deem relevant. Note this is not a music composition role.
Responsibilities:
- High level oversight of the CIG Audio team; leading by example particularly
- Reviewing performance of CIG Audio team members
- Liaising with outsourcers and across internal disciplines as primary audio point person, keeping channels open with e.g. game designers about their audio needs
- Help specify and design audio tools/tech with our audio programming team
- Provide feedback and communicate the bigger vision of the game audio’s audio direction among the wider team
- Collaborate on design approaches to the sound of the game, actively looking to assist others with your experience and knowledge
- Should also be able to work independently as well as collaboratively in a fluid audio team
- As well as some sound design creation and implementation duties, some music and dialogue implementation may be required from time to time
Requirements:
- Solid experience of at least one (preferably multiple) Digital Audio Workstations & various plug-ins (we’re Reaper fans here but you can use what you’re most comfortable with, if you’re capable of producing world class assets in a particular DAW)
- A strong ability to lead, but not to dictate – we have a flat team, we look out for each other
- Solid management and organisational skills – you don’t see these duties as a chore but as a necessary foundation for the team to do their best work
- A working knowledge of common audio middleware and/or proprietary tech. Lumberyard / CryEngine is a real plus point here, also Wwise
- Plenty of general experience using game engines to implement and work with sound. If you’ve used another engine and it does stuff better, we’ll look to replicate it, if it improves things
- A game audio mind-set. g. you like to granulate loops and re-sequence that stuff. You wouldn’t be seen dead looping a 30 second wav in a game anymore
- PD, Max/MSP, Python, XML, C++ or C# would be a plus, though we’d hope you wouldn’t need to, it all helps. Some visual programming wouldn’t go amiss either, e.g. Kismet, Flowgraph, Frostbite
- A great show reel of relevant audio work for games
- Great communication skills, both text and verbal
- Skills in Excel and JIRA etc.