Director of Engineering, Gameplay

Craft: Technology & Development Job Description: We’re looking for an Engineering Director for the Gameplay & Monetisation domain in Candy Crush Soda Saga - to drive the evolution of one of the world’s most iconic puzzle games. You’ll lead a team of engineering managers and engineers owning the technical direction behind Soda’s core gameplay, economy, and monetisation systems. From experimentation to performance, scalability, and tooling you’ll ensure the technology behind Soda enables fast learning, confident decisions, and great player experiences at scale. This role is a key part of Soda’s engineering leadership and is part of the leadership team for the Gameplay & Monetisation domain - a 50+ person domain responsible for how Soda plays, progresses, rewards, and monetises. You’ll work in close partnership with Product, Creative, and Analytics to turn ambitious ideas into robust, scalable systems used by millions of players every day. We’re excited you’re here While the team is off for the holidays, you can still apply We look forward to review applications in early 2026. Your Role in Our Kingdom Own the technical vision across gameplay, economy, and monetisation systems - ensuring our foundations enable both player joy and business impact. Lead and grow a high-performing engineering team (16 people) - creating an environment where engineers are empowered to make strong technical decisions close to the work. Set clear technical direction and standards, balancing speed, quality, and long-term sustainability in a live, evolving product. Partner with Product, Creative, and Analytics leaders to shape solutions that are technically sound, data-informed, and player-first. Champion engineering excellence - from system design and code quality to performance, reliability, and scalability. Enable fast, safe experimentation by strengthening our tooling, pipelines, and experimentation platforms. Collaborate closely with Soda central tech and broader King platform teams to ensure alignment, reuse, and architectural coherence. Build for the future - evolving our technology, practices, and capabilities to support Soda’s long-term ambitions. Skills to Create Thrills Proven experience leading engineering teams in complex, fast-paced product or live-service environments. Strong technical leadership with a track record of designing and evolving large-scale, high-impact systems. The ability to translate product and business strategy into clear technical direction and execution. Comfort operating at both strategic and hands-on levels — equally credible in architectural discussions and leadership forums. Experience growing senior engineers and engineering managers, building strong teams and healthy engineering culture. A collaborative mindset - you enjoy solving problems alongside Product, Creative, Analytics and Platform partners. Fluent in English (written and spoken). Bonus: Experience in mobile gaming or live-service products. Background in experimentation platforms, game economies, or monetisation systems. Deep expertise in modern C++ or similar performance-critical environments. About King With a mission of Making the World Playful , King is a leading interactive entertainment company with more than 20 years of history of delivering some of the world’s most iconic games in the mobile gaming industry, including the world-famous Candy Crush franchise, as well as other mobile game hits such as Farm Heroes Sag a. King games are played by more than 200 million monthly active users. King, part of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has Kingsters in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Malta. More information can be found at King.com or by following us on LinkedIn, @lifeatking on Instagram, or @king_games on X. #J-18808-Ljbffr