Panic Blog

Hello!!

Panic has a job opening for a Playdate Senior QA/Release Engineer (March 2022) on our award-winning team.

Panic does a lot of interesting things, from developing Mac and iOS software (like Nova, Transmit, and Prompt), to publishing video games (like Untitled Goose Game and Firewatch), to developing our own handheld gaming system from scratch with a full SDK (Playdate). In this case, we need some help with the latter.

We’re looking for a Senior QA/Release Engineer that’s truly excited about the prospect of helping us make sure our critical Playdate software is as top-quality and bug-free as possible. You’ll be in charge of releases of Playdate OS (operating system) and the Playdate SDK (software development kit).

We are mostly located in Portland, Oregon, and would be happy to pay for your relocation here if interested. We’re also open to remote work for this position if you are based in the USA. (We hope in the future to expand our hiring and compliance to include international applicants, but we’re not there yet.) Due to Covid-19, our office is currently operating in a hybrid mode, with many employees choosing to only work from home, but while some of us hope to return to the office as soon as we can, others will continue to work remotely.

What kind of work, exactly?

In addition to thoroughly testing and qualifying builds of Playdate OS and the SDK, you’ll also be responsible for quality assurance for Playdate-related applications, including the device simulator, and video capture utilities, which run on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Ideally, you would also be willing to proactively develop and maintain any tools and processes to streamline and simplify QA.

The ideal candidate will have lots of experience with git and issue tracking systems like GitLab. Command-line expertise is a requirement. Experience with embedded systems like Playdate and firmware testing is a bonus, but not required. Experience with deployment and measurement tools such as Memfault is also nice, but not required. Self-direction and strong self-motivation are critical. Interest in creating the necessary tools to make the QA and Release process easier will help a lot. If you think you’d have an unstoppable sense of pride in being the last stop on our software release chain, we’d love to hear from you.

One other thing

Also, a standard and important Panic note about our job postings. If you read our qualifications, and feel like you’re really really close to hitting them all, but you’re missing one — or maybe you aren’t super confident or are prone to imposter syndrome and a voice is telling you to walk away — please consider pushing through and applying. None of us here are perfect geniuses or have it together 100% — we’re all just doing the best job we can, and I’m confident you can do that too.

We really look forward to hearing from you.

Click here for full details, and to apply to our Playdate Senior QA/Release Engineer (March 2022) job. Applications close April 4th, 2022.