Metal Game Engineer Manager

Apple's Metal Game Ecosystem team is looking for an engineer to join our team with a passion for performance and quality. You will work closely with 3rd party game and game engine developers as they optimize their renderers for Apple's unified gaming platform including Mac, iPhone and iPad. You will be the technical voice of the game ecosystem back to Apple and help to inform future features and projects.

Description

We are seeking a Metal Game Ecosystem Manager to lead our team of software engineers. In this critical role, you will be leading a team optimizing AAA games across various Apple platforms, ensuring our partners and internal teams deliver games at performance, quality and feature parity realizing the full potential of Apple Silicon. This position requires deep technical expertise in real-time graphics and game development, exceptional leadership skills, and a strategic mindset to foster innovation and drive impactful improvements within the gaming ecosystem. What You'll Do: Lead & Mentor: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of talented software engineers focused on graphics optimization and game ecosystem development. Foster a collaborative, high-performance, and technically excellent environment. Strategic Direction: Define team goals, project roadmaps, and individual development plans that help drive the Metal game ecosystem forward. Technical Oversight: Oversee the design, development, and optimization of performance, quality and feature improvements in AAA games and game engines leveraging Apple's Metal API. Performance Engineering: Drive initiatives for CPU, GPU, and memory optimization across a diverse set of game titles and engines. Utilize and evangelize advanced profiling and debugging tools to identify bottlenecks and propose robust, scalable solutions. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with internal game teams, external partners, and Apple engineers to integrate optimizations, share best practices, and contribute to the advancement of Metal for gaming. Problem Solving: Dive deep into complex 3rd party codebases to understand performance characteristics and implement targeted improvements. Ecosystem Development: Contribute to the strategic direction of the Metal gaming ecosystem, identifying opportunities for innovation, tooling improvements, and scaling the ecosystem. Quality & Standards: Ensure high standards of code quality, performance, and maintainability across all team deliverables.

• Experience: 5+ years of experience in software development, with at least 3 years in a lead or management role focusing on real-time graphics within the video game industry.
• Real-time Graphics Expertise: Deep expertise in real-time graphics rendering pipelines, GPU architecture, and game engine design.
• Optimization Experience: Proven track record in game profiling, optimization (CPU, GPU, memory), and debugging across complex gaming titles.
• Programming Proficiency: Exceptional proficiency in C/C++ development.
• Large Codebases: Proven experience working effectively within large, complex 3rd party codebases.
• Game Production: Strong understanding of the end-to-end video game development lifecycle and production processes.
• Leadership & Communication: Excellent communication, interpersonal, and organizational skills. Demonstrated ability to effectively articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences, lead, motivate, and manage high-performing engineering teams

• Metal API: Direct and significant experience with Apple's Metal graphics API.
• Other Graphics APIs: Experience with DirectX and/or Vulkan.
• AI/ML: Familiarity with AI/ML techniques, particularly as they apply to real-time graphics or game development (e.g., upscaling, content generation, character animation).
• Platform Specifics: Experience developing for Apple platforms (iOS, macOS, visionOS) or game consoles.
• Tooling: Experience with GPU performance counters, shader compilers, and platform-specific debugging tools (e.g., Xcode Instruments, RenderDoc).