Junior Software Developer jobs in Leicester

Join our team in Nottingham

Greentube UK is a leading online games studio, and we're expanding our Software Team. Our office is in the centre of Nottingham, our team has a strong reputation for quality, and we work in a productive, friendly environment. This is a hybrid role (work from home Mondays and Fridays), with flexible hours and a half-day Friday.

Who are we?

Greentube, a subsidiary of Novomatic, is a leading full-service provider in the online and mobile gaming sector and a pioneer in state-of-the-art gaming solutions. Novomatic employs over 23,900 staff across 50 countries, headquartered in Vienna.

What you'll be working on

You'll build the front-end game clients for our online casino games, specifically 2D slots: reels, game logic, UI and animation. Our current engine is a long-established, entirely in-house SDK. The client code is written in Java, but it runs through an in-house converter that compiles it to JavaScript, so in practice you're working with a deliberately constrained subset of Java rather than the full modern toolbox, and the framework handles much of the running of the app for you.

The work is more varied than "building slots" suggests. Alongside creating new titles, a large part of the role involves taking our own existing games and reworking them: reskinning a game with new graphics and themes, and "moving on" a title by adding features, mechanics or fresh visual treatments that make it a genuinely new product rather than a straight copy. We're also building the next generation of our platform, a new C#-based framework that borrows heavily from concepts you'll find in modern game engines (Unity), and bringing our existing titles across onto it. The work spans building new games, evolving established ones, and helping shape the platform they run on.

Who we're looking for

Because our engine is entirely in-house, nobody joins already knowing it. What matters most to us is that you can get productive quickly in an unfamiliar, bespoke codebase, so we're looking for strong fundamentals and adaptability first and foremost. Our engine is long-established and does things its own way; it sometimes predates or ignores modern convention. The developers who thrive here are pragmatic and adaptable, comfortable working within the constraints of the environment rather than adhering to one "correct" way of doing things.

We're not a Unity or Unreal studio and you won't be working in a 3D engine. But if you understand how game engines are put together (component models, scene and asset pipelines, the game loop), those concepts map directly onto our frameworks and are increasingly valuable here.

What you'll need

• Solid working knowledge of at least one object-oriented language, ideally Java or C#, given our current and future stacks
• Genuine comfort picking up and working productively in large, established, or legacy code you didn't write (this is central to the role)
• A pragmatic, adaptable approach to an unusual, constrained, bespoke environment
• Strong problem-solving, able to make progress on unfamiliar problems where the information available is limited
• Ability to take on multiple tasks, prioritise between them, break work into sub-tasks and provide estimates
• Ability to review other developers' code and identify problems
• Ability to make changes and contributions to large internal codebases
• A track record of delivering to an agreed specification with minimal bugs
• Confident with source control (Git) branching and merge requests in a team
• Good grasp of OOP and common design patterns
• Comfortable working in a regulated environment (UK Gambling Commission and equivalents), where accuracy and compliance matter

Nice to have

• Any experience of a codebase that compiles or transpiles to another target (for example, Java or C# to JavaScript)
• C#, and tooling such as NuGet and Visual Studio, relevant to the framework we're moving toward
• Understanding of game-engine architecture concepts, as described above
• Commercial experience building games or real-time, interactive UI
• Spine animation, CI and automation, unit testing

Our offer

• Salary based on your experience and skills
• Flexible working hours around core hours
• Half-day Fridays (core hours end at 1pm)
• Hybrid working, Mondays and Fridays from home
• City-centre location
• Strong route for progression, with a preference to promote from within
• A strong working and social culture, with regular company events
• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Pension, bonus scheme, health package, life insurance, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, sick pay
• Casual dress

If you have not received a reply within two weeks of your application you have not been successful.

NO AGENCIES

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We shall process only the data submitted by the applicants for evaluating the job application. We shall take no responsibility for the type and content of the data shared by the applicants. In no case during the evaluation process shall we require and/or process sensitive data. Privacy and security is a priority for us and we shall handle the data with the adequate measures. The processing is not automatic and the data shall be processed only within our company and shared with relevant persons on a need to know basis. The provided data shall be retained for at least 6 months. During this period, we may contact the applicants for other potential vacancies. After this term and/or upon the applicant´s request we shall delete the data unless longer retention periods are prescribed and/or permitted by law. In case of further queries, the applicants may contact us via Indeed.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: £30,000.00-£37,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Casual dress
• Company events
• Enhanced maternity leave
• Enhanced paternity leave
• Flexitime
• Health & wellbeing programme
• Life insurance
• Referral programme
• Sick pay

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Nottingham NG1 7EH: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)

Application question(s):

• Are you above the age of 18?
• Do you have commercial (paid, team-based) experience developing games or interactive software? Please note how this differs from any personal or hobby projects.
• Have you ever used source control software? If so, please leave details.
• Do you have any experience developing a project for 2D gaming?
• Have you had any experience working in a large, established, or legacy codebase you didn't write?

Work authorisation:

• United Kingdom (required)

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Nottingham NG1 7EH