Interview

How to get a job at Berlin casual developer GameDuell

Head of HR Rüdiger von Hennig reveals top tips

How to get a job at Berlin casual developer GameDuell

Following our coverage of GameDuell's open positions, we got in touch with Head of HR Rüdiger von Hennig to find out more about the company and what it's looking for in a future employees.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you give us some background on GameDuell?

Rüdiger von Hennig: GameDuell is a developer of casual web, social and mobile games based in Berlin. Our vision is bringing people together to have a good time with games - wherever, whenever.

The focus of the company is on creating engaging and entertaining multiplayer and cross-platform experiences for our players.

To achieve this we have developed our own dedicated cross-platform game server solution and our own cross-platform development toolkit, which we just pushed open source.

It is based on the programming language Haxe.

What are the best things about working at GameDuell?

At GameDuell we are working right in the centre of the technological shift from conventional online games to social and mobile games. Our aim is to drive the dynamic trend to social and mobile games further with our cross-platform approach.

Players should be able to play our games on their most popular devices and in all the circumstances they want to - be it on their desktop computer at home, their laptop in the lunch break at work, their tablet on their sofa or on their smarthphone in the public transport to work.

Some downtime at the GameDuell office

Besides our exciting tech and game projects, GameDuell promotes a 21st century work approach with small, independent scrum teams, an agile project management style throughout the company, flexible work hours, regular company meetings and retrospectives, and many team events and joint activities.

Are there any more details on the vacant positions?

We are a tech company. Almost the half of the team is working in the technology or product development teams. We love our products and have a really strong technological basis to operate them.

To strengthen our team in that regard we are currently looking for an experienced Database Architect, for a Java Lead Developer and a Lead Mobile Games Developer among others.

The Database Architect should have comprehensive data infrastructure know-how, especially in PostgreSQL as well as Hadoop. At the same time he must have the ability to understand what our team needs to form a dedicated business intelligence platform.

Almost the half of the team is working in the technology or product development teams.
Rüdiger von Hennig

The Java Lead Developer is driving the live operations of our games across platforms and is responsible to integrate all game-related backend logics such as payment services and customer support.

They should be able to create innovative solutions for handling the traffic of millions of game players. The Lead Mobile Games Developer will lead a cross-platform team along with our Technical Director.

They need to have great iOS, Android and HTML5 knowledge and should be a full-stack developer with great games experience that is able to contribute to architectural decisions.

Besides these three people we are looking for many other skilled developers, IT experts, game designers, graphics artists, marketing managers and agile project managers.

Any tips for those applying? What sort of attitude and skill-set are you looking for in a candidate?

Technical excellence and team fit are essential for us to hire somebody. On our company website, we give some impressions of our company culture that we are also looking for in candidates.

In order to apply we require a complete CV, a cover letter and ideally some work samples. Candidates should show a passion for games, a hands-on mentality and be flexible to adapt to a fast changing environment.

What's it like working in Berlin?

Berlin is a great city to live in! There is so much to explore from historic places over galleries, museums and high culture to restaurants, cafés and the famous never-ending Berlin nightlife.

The city is much greener than you would think, with many parks and even some forest. It offers an abundance of water with two rivers and over hundred lakes to check out in all seasons.

And it’s still affordable to live here in comparison to other metropolitan regions such as London or Paris.

But not only living is exciting in Berlin, but working also. Berlin has developed into one of the most promising digital economy hubs in the world with many startups and grown-up online businesses like Zalando or Soundcloud that are well connected.

There are so many events every week where you can meet up colleagues from other companies and exchange over a cool drink. It’s the mixture of living conditions, the freedom to grow as well as great job opportunities and networks that makes the city unique!

To view all vacancies at GameDuell, visit its jobs site.

Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.