EA Hyderabad is hiring

With gaming now become a viable career option in India, top names in the video game industry are looking at India as a future hub for quality video game development. And Electronic Arts has taken the lead, setting up a world class development studio in India, providing an opportunity for Indians to work with the best in the business.

Electronic Arts, or EA, is the world’s largest publisher of interactive entertainment. It is the company behind best-selling game franchises such as The Sims, FIFA and Need For Speed, which have now become household names. EA is also the first international publisher to set up base in India, first with its publishing business, and now with its new development studio in Hyderabad.

Currently employing 200 people, EA Hyderabad aims to grow its workforce two-fold in the near future, providing opportunities to not only engineers and animators, but professionals from various industries. The Hyderabad studio’s operations vary from end-to-end game development for mobile devices, art and assets creation for PC and console platforms for EA’s worldwide studios, online services for EA’s best-selling The Sims games, and automation and manual game testing for PC and console platforms. This diversity in operations calls for employees with varying levels of expertise and experience.

We spoke to a few employees at EA Hyderabad to give us an insight into the studio’s operations and what it takes to work at EA.

Amit Gupta
Automation Engineer
I have a B-Tech in Computer Sciences. I worked at Wipro for two years before joining EA. For this job, academics don’t really matter if you have the experience. But for anyone looking to get into this field, the most important prerequisite is that he/she should be a gaming freak. An interest in gaming is a must, because a lot of my job involves playing games. My job requires me to create automation programs for game testing. So I am required to play the games, and analyse them so we can effectively create an automation program that works. So playing the game is a big part of it. If you do have an interest in gaming, EA is a dream company.

Krishna Chaitanya
Assistant Development Manager
Simply put, my job is project management. I work in the mobile division. Presently, I’m handling the Asia-Pacific region, where we overlook different games that have to be delivered to different mobile devices. Right from putting the game on the phones and getting them into the market is what we handle. We ensure that the game is suited to the various regions and different devices. Educational qualifications are not really a major criterion for a job like this. I myself studied mechanical engineering, and now I’m at EA; there’s no real link between the two. What is important is creativity and a passion for gaming.

Arun Kunchala
Assistant Development Manager
As Krishna said, there is no particular educational background required for this job. But yes, you need to be a gamer. As a project manager, you handle game development from scratch till the end; that is your game! I, however, deal more with future-tech – the latest technology, the latest gadgets like iPhone, etc. I do a lot of R&D, while Krishna is more into intensive project management. While he handles a thousand titles a month, I handle two or three. So for someone like me, it’s also very important to stay up-to-date with all the latest technology. You need to know the latest market trends, at the same time you need to figure how you’re going to adapt your games to that technology.

Abhishek Deshpande

Game Designer
I’ve studied BE, but there aren’t really any courses or degrees for what this job requires; that was self-learnt. I have designed about 20 international games across genres; two of them at EA. You acquire a lot of the knowledge required for this job by playing games; it gives you an understanding of how games work. There is also a lot of creativity involved; you should be able to visualise and have the passion for creating something new. Even if you have a simple object like a ball, there are thousands of ways in which you can weave gameplay around it. So a game designer should be able to come up with different possibilities and ideas. We visualise how a game should work.

Amol Samant
Engineering Manager
We cater to several projects for teams worldwide. My job involves managing programmers in our team, and also planning and managing the various projects of game development for the mobile division. We oversee game development from start to finish. I’ve been developing games on various platforms for the past eight years and that experience has definitely helped here at EA. Programmers in our team work on various parts of a game, ranging from artificial intelligence to physics. We also have people who work on optimisation for various devices, so the game engine is a very important part of that. We have some people focussed on developing the engine. Delivering the game to the customer is also handled by our team; we work on the delivery platforms that will allow the customer to get the game onto their mobile device. For our team, we hire both freshers and those with more experience, so there is a balance. We do hire a lot of freshers, mostly engineers. But we also hire people from other backgrounds if they have the aptitude for the job.

Next Page: Current job openings

EA Hyderabad plans to ramp up its operations, and to do this, they aim to expand their workforce from 200 to 500 in the near future. Here’s a detailed list of jobs currently open at the Hyderabad studio (the job descriptions are as provided by EA):

Associate Development Manager

EA Mobile has an exciting opportunity for an Associate Development Manager, which involves planning multiple projects, helping the Assistant Development Managers to develop, track, manage and control the internal project plans for multiple projects.

Primary Responsibilities:

Qualifications:

Expertise:

 

Lead Engineer (Sims)

The Sims is one of the most successful PC games in the world selling over 90 million units in 22 different languages. Games include The Sims 2, SimCity, and MySims. Many Sims games have a strong online community like TheSims2.com and EA is creating new and innovative standalone online communities like TheSimsOnStage.com and TheSimsCarnival.com. These online services are developed by the Sims Internet Group.

EA has an exciting opportunity for a Lead Software Engineer. The Sims Internet Group is looking to hire a Lead Software Engineer to its team in India. This individual will work closely with the development team in the US to support existing online services and to help in creating new services that will grow EA’s online services portfolio.

Primary Responsibilities:

Role requirements:

Responsibilities:

QA Lead (Mobile)

EA Mobile has an exciting opportunity for a Quality Assurance Lead. A QA Lead is responsible for following and recommending Quality Assurance procedures and monitoring team performance and assuring that right team spirit is maintained throughout the team.

Primary Responsibilities:

Role Requirements:

Additional Skills if applicable (added Plus):

Next Page: More jobs

QA Tester (Mobile)

EA Mobile has an exciting opportunity for a Quality Assurance Tester. A QA Tester tests Mobile games for functionality and usability, tracking, recording and verifying discrepancies and following and recommending quality assurance procedures.

Primary Responsibilities:

Role Requirements:

Additional Skills if applicable (added Plus):

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Software Engineer (J2ME)

EA Mobile has an exciting opportunity for a J2ME Software Engineer, who will be responsible for working with the EA studio engineering team to understand the game logic and source code and then deploy the high quality mobile games for EA mobile’s global clientele.

Software engineer will be a key member of EA Mobile’s Global Game Deployment team, which is responsible for serving EA’s markets globally including US, Europe and APAC markets.

Responsibilities:

Skill Set and Experience:

Software Engineer (WinCE)

EA Mobile has an exciting opportunity for a WinCE Software Engineer, who will work with the EA studio engineering team to develop high quality mobile games and deploy and localise existing games for global markets. Demonstrated technical skills and game industry experience will be called upon to help deliver highest quality mobile games.

Primary Responsibilities:

Role requirements:

Experience with any of the following is a plus:

Next Page: Just One More

QA Test Manager

Electronic Arts is seeking a Quality Assurance Test Manager to join its global Quality Assurance Technology organisation. The QA Technology organisation delivers a set of software tools and services for developing and verifying game software to teams throughout EA’s world wide studios and across multiple gaming platforms including PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC, and PSP.

This QA Test Manager manages and leads a team of software testers responsible for planning, designing and executing tests on the full suite of software tools and services offered by QA Technology. The QA Test Manager will be instrumental in ensuring the quality of EA’s technology toolsets and white box testing services. The position is also responsible for the professional and career advancement of the staff reporting to them.

Key Responsibilities:
Leadership:

Execution:

Business Management:

Creative Quality:

Required Skills and Experience

Performance Competencies:

Those interested in either of these jobs can send their CVs to sucharita.singh@ea.com

Join the discussion on the IndianVideoGamer Community forums

For more information about EA’s Hyderabad studio, read IndianVideoGamer visits EA Hyderabad

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