Netflix says it is “rapidly expanding new gaming offerings” for its cloud gaming service.
As spotted by NME (opens in new tab), the company’s gaming ambitions were listed in a recruitment advertisement looking to recruit (opens in new tab) a new senior software engineer, specializing in rendering.
Whilst the position itself isn’t such big news, it’s the advert we’re interested in, as it shows Netflix is expanding its games business.
“Bring your passion for games and joy of enabling others as we build our games experience,” the recruitment advertisement says. “We are rapidly expanding new gaming offerings, so we are seeking a rendering engineer who is excited to help us lead the continued building and scaling of our efforts for our international audience.
“We are looking for a rendering engineer to support our cloud gaming service,” it goes on to add. “In this role, you will help optimize the rendering of games so we can render multiple games on our cloud gaming appliances. You will also assist with the development of SDKs to enable game developers to succeed in writing high-quality games for the Netflix cloud games ecosystem.”
As well as the usual coding languages and experience, the “qualifications” section also asks for someone with experience working with the “Unity or Unreal game engines” – both of which are used in games and marketing – and “experience with game development” is listed as a “nice to have”.
The news comes during a busy times for Netflix, which acquired its third game development studio in six months earlier this year (opens in new tab).
Boss Fight Entertainment – which describes itself as “an independent game development studio in Texas” – is the streaming giant’s third game-flavored acquisition in just six months and follows the $74 million takeover of Finnish mobile developer Next Games (opens in new tab) earlier this month, and Oxenfree 2 (opens in new tab) developer Night School Studio, which Netflix added to its portfolio in 2021.
“We’re still in the early days of building great game experiences as part of your Netflix membership,” explained Amir Rahimi, Netflix’s VP of game studios, at the time.
“Through partnerships with developers around the world, hiring top talent, and acquisitions like this, we hope to build a world-class games studio capable of bringing a wide variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games – with no ads and no in-app purchases – to our hundreds of millions of members around the world.”
If you’re looking for your next binge, check out our guides to the best Netflix shows (opens in new tab) and the best Netflix movies (opens in new tab) to stream right now.