🚀 Architect, Poker

Level Up Your Career with Zynga!

At Zynga, we bring people together through the power of play. As a global leader in interactive entertainment and a proud label of Take‑Two Interactive, our games have been downloaded over 6 billion times—connecting players in 175+ countries through fun, strategy, and a little friendly competition.

From thrilling casino spins to epic strategy battles, mind‑bending puzzles, and social word challenges, our diverse game portfolio has something for everyone. Fan‑favorites and latest hits include FarmVille™, Words With Friends™, Zynga Poker™, Game of Thrones Slots Casino™, Wizard of Oz Slots™, Hit it Rich! Slots™, Wonka Slots™, Top Eleven™, Toon Blast™, Empires & Puzzles™, Merge Dragons!™, CSR Racing™, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells™, Match Factory™, and Color Block Jam™—plus many more!

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in California, our teams span North America, Europe, and Asia, working together to craft unforgettable gaming experiences. Whether you're spinning, strategizing, matching, or competing, Zynga is where fun meets innovation—and where you can take your career to the next level.

Join us and be part of the play!

Position Overview:

Zynga is looking for a client architect in the Austin, San Mateo, or Toronto areas, and more specifically, someone whose level of experience should be equivalent to an Architect.

We have a well‑rounded and tight‑knit distributed team with a healthy mix of engineering skill levels, and we’re looking to expand our team to tackle a variety of new tasks and challenges that we face. We need a self‑driven and motivated architect who is a strong leader, communicator, works well as a team player and under pressure, and can assist with building resilient, stable and performant front‑end client technology. The candidate would have an opportunity to work on user‑facing gameplay features, core engine functionality, and have a general focus on solving complex and challenging problems for high‑profile titles.

Our mission is to “Connect the World through Games” by building a truly social experience that makes the world a better place. To be successful in this role you will have a passion for games, a high level of integrity, great technical depth and skills, and a strong desire to build successful software.

What You’ll Do:

• Architectural Leadership: Define and own the client application's technical architecture, including code structure, systems, data flow, and state management
• Technical Design & Strategy: Translate high‑level product and feature requirements into clear, technical designs and actionable development plans, ensuring the solution is efficient, stable, and maintainable.
• Performance and Optimization: Establish and enforce best practices for performance optimization, framerate, asset management, memory usage, and loading times across target platforms (e.g., iOS, Android, Steam, Web).
• Code Quality & Standards: Establish coding standards, conduct thorough code reviews, and mentor other engineers on advanced programming patterns
• Cross‑Functional Collaboration: Work closely with backend engineers, designers, artists, QA, and product managers to ensure client‑side solutions integrate seamlessly with other services and meet creative/functional requirements.
• Tooling & Pipeline: Evaluate and recommend third‑party tools, plugins, and internal development workflow improvements to enhance team productivity and the quality of the final product.
• Troubleshooting: Act as the final point of technical escalation for complex client‑side bugs, performance bottlenecks, and systems integration issues.
• Planning & Execution: Scope out very large tasks and systems, and coordinate the delegation of that work; Lead month long efforts and participate in planning for quarter long efforts.
• Evangelism & Mentorship: Give team and/or divisional tech talks on architectures that you’ve built; Work to identify and help to improve team and process inefficiencies; Help mentor and interview other engineers.

What You Bring:

• B.Sc. in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent education / work experience
• 10+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 5 years focused on the Unity engine in a senior, lead, or architectural role.
• Expert proficiency in C# and Object‑Oriented Programming (OOP) principles, with a deep understanding of design patterns (e.g., MVC, MVVM) and how to apply them effectively in a Unity context.
• Extensive experience with Unity’s core systems: UI (uGUI/UIToolkit), Profiling tools, AssetBundles/Addressables, Animation, and Shaders/Rendering Pipelines (URP/HDRP).
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing scalable, performant client network architectures for real‑time multiplayer or live‑service applications.
• Solid understanding of software testing methodologies (unit testing, integration testing) and experience incorporating them into the development pipeline.
• Extensive experience with client error reporting and logging (Bugsnag, Splunk, or equivalents), and best practices for gathering client telemetry and prioritizing issues.
• Proficiency with version control systems (Git) and collaborative development workflows (branching, merging).
• Exceptional analytical, problem‑solving, and communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders in a highly collaborative environment.
• Prior game development experience (shipped titles or live games experience)
• Self‑motivated, self‑directed, with proven experience researching, developing, and optimizing for a variety of platforms.

Bonus Points:

• Hands‑on experience with Unity’s Data‑Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS), including the Entity Component System (ECS), Jobs System, and Burst Compiler.
• Experience with advanced rendering techniques, custom shaders (ShaderLab/HLSL), and GPU‑side optimization.
• Mobile development experience with a focus on iOS & Android.
• Familiarity with deployment and platform‑specific optimization for Mobile (iOS/Android).
• Experience developing apps for non-mobile platforms like WebGL, Facebook, and Steam.
• Knowledge of cloud services (e.g., AWS) as they relate to client-side data management and live operations.
• Prior experience in a technical consulting or client-facing solutions architect role.
• A strong portfolio of high-quality, shipped interactive products.
• Experience creating and maintaining build scripts and pipelines (e.g., Jenkins).
• Back‑end development
• LiveOps experience, including managing post‑release events and content delivery.

What we offer you:

Zynga offers a world‑class benefits package that helps support and balance the needs of our teams. To find out more about our benefits, visit the Zynga Benefits site

The pay range for this position in California at the start of employment is expected to be between $163,400 - $241,820 per year.

However, base pay offered is based on market location, and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job‑related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations. Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment. If hired, employee will be in an "at‑will position" and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, which means we are committed to creating and celebrating diverse thoughts, cultures, and backgrounds throughout our organization. Employment with us is based on substantive ability, objective qualifications, and work ethic – not an individual’s race, creed, color, religion, sex or gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry, alienage or citizenship status, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, status as a victim of domestic violence or sex offenses, reproductive health decision, or any other characteristics protected by applicable law.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to providing the necessary support and accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities, health conditions, or impairments (subject to any local qualifying requirements) to ensure their full participation in the job application or interview process. Please contact us at to request any accommodations or for support related to your application for an open position.

Please be aware that Zynga does not conduct job interviews or make job offers over third‑party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or others. Zynga also does not engage in any financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process, and will never ask a candidate for their personal or financial information over an app or other unofficial chat channel. Any attempt to do so may be the result of a scam or phishing attack, and you should not engage. Zynga’s in‑house recruitment team will only contact individuals through their official Company email addresses (i.e., via a zynga.com, naturalmotion.com, smallgiantgames.com, themavens.com, gram.gs email domain).

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