Programming Languages & Core Development Topics
Programming languages, development fundamentals, coding concepts, and core data structures. Includes syntax, algorithms, memory management at a programming level, asynchronous patterns, and concurrency primitives. Also covers core data manipulation concepts like hashing, collections, error handling, and DOM manipulation for web development. Excludes tool-specific proficiency (see 'Tools, Frameworks & Implementation Proficiency').
Animation Systems
Comprehensive coverage of animation system architecture and runtime integration for games and interactive applications. Topics include skeletal and bone based animation, keyframe and frame based playback and time based sampling, animation state machines and transition logic, blend trees and blending strategies, animation layering and priority resolution, and event driven animation triggers and callbacks. Also covers root motion handling, inverse kinematics and retargeting, animation asset pipelines, tooling and data formats used to author and export animations, compression techniques and memory footprint considerations, profiling and runtime performance optimization, multithreaded playback and concurrency models, and synchronization of animations with rendering and physics subsystems. For networked environments this includes interpolation, prediction, and replication strategies for animated actors. Candidates should be able to design animation architectures, choose blending and transition strategies, reason about quality versus performance trade offs, optimize runtime playback and memory usage, and describe tooling and workflows used to author, compress, debug, and profile animations in production.
C Sharp Fundamentals and Best Practices
Tests core knowledge of the C Sharp programming language and idiomatic patterns for writing maintainable and performant code. Topics include value types and reference types, memory and object semantics, language features such as properties, delegates, events, interfaces and inheritance, generics, LINQ, asynchronous programming patterns including async and await, exception handling, and commonly recommended best practices for performance and readability. Candidates should be able to discuss common pitfalls such as boxing and excessive allocation, show how to write clean code in the language ecosystem and apply relevant debugging and profiling techniques.
C Sharp and C Plus Plus
Core language fundamentals and idiomatic patterns for both C Sharp and C Plus Plus as used in game development. Topics include syntax and semantic differences, memory models and ownership, value versus reference semantics, resource management patterns, object oriented and generic programming, language specific performance characteristics, concurrency primitives and threading models, error handling, build toolchains, and best practices for writing efficient maintainable code in each language.
Mobile Memory and Resource Management
Covers memory management principles and resource handling for mobile applications across platforms. Candidates should understand platform specific models such as automatic reference counting on iOS and garbage collection on Android, common causes of memory leaks and retain cycles, and how reference ownership and weak versus strong references affect lifetime. Include techniques for releasing resources correctly in lifecycle methods and avoiding long lived references that hold activity or context objects. Expect knowledge of memory profiling and diagnostics including tools and workflows for locating leaks and high memory usage, strategies to prevent out of memory conditions, and trade offs such as requesting a larger heap. Also cover cross platform considerations for frameworks like React Native and Flutter and practical practices for identifying and fixing real memory issues in production, such as analyzing heap dumps, using allocation instrumentation, and applying targeted fixes and regression tests.
Game Logic Implementation
Designing and implementing the code that enforces game rules and player interactions across single player and multiplayer contexts. Topics include translating design documents into efficient code architectures, implementing player movement and input handling, building character controllers, choosing between physics based and kinematic movement, using raycasting and collision detection and response, and connecting input systems to game logic. Also covers implementing game and character state machines, turn based logic and rule enforcement, handling edge cases and race conditions, ensuring determinism where required, writing testable and maintainable systems, and considering performance implications of simulation and update loops.
Error Handling and Defensive Programming
Covers designing and implementing defensive, fault tolerant code and system behaviors to prevent and mitigate production failures. Topics include input validation and sanitization, null and missing data handling, overflow and boundary protections, exception handling and propagation patterns, clear error reporting and structured logging for observability, graceful degradation and fallback strategies, retry and backoff policies and idempotency for safe retries. Also address concurrency and synchronization concerns, resource and memory management to avoid exhaustion, security related input checks, and how to document and escalate residual risks. Candidates should discuss pragmatic trade offs between robustness and complexity, show concrete defensive checks and assertions, and describe test strategies for error paths including unit tests and integration tests and how monitoring and operational responses tie into robustness.
Maintainability and Legacy Code
Covers strategies and principles for evolving codebases safely and keeping them easy to understand and change over time. Topics include design principles such as Single Responsibility, Open Closed, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion, removing duplication, establishing appropriate abstraction boundaries, separation of concerns, identifying and remediating code smells, incremental refactoring approaches, regression risk mitigation via tests and feature toggles, backward compatibility and migration strategies, and prioritizing technical debt reduction. Interviewers assess the candidate ability to plan pragmatic refactors, minimize risk during change, and improve long term health of a codebase.
Concurrency and Multithreading
Principles and practical techniques for concurrent execution and safe access to shared state across threads or execution contexts. Topics include main thread versus background threads, dispatching and scheduling work, synchronization primitives, locks, atomic operations, avoiding deadlocks and race conditions, designing thread safe data structures, reactive and event driven approaches, and platform specific tools such as Grand Central Dispatch and OperationQueue on iOS or coroutines and LiveData on Android. Evaluations focus on reasoning about correctness, performance trade offs, and methods to prevent UI blocking and ensure responsiveness.
C Plus Plus and C Sharp
Demonstrate proficiency in C Plus Plus and C Sharp with emphasis on language fundamentals, memory and resource management, and performance trade offs. For C Plus Plus discuss pointers and references, value versus reference semantics, resource acquisition is initialization, smart pointers, move and copy semantics, common undefined behavior pitfalls, concurrency primitives, cache locality, low level profiling and toolchain considerations. For C Sharp discuss managed runtime characteristics, garbage collector behavior and mitigation of pause effects, interop with native code, and idiomatic patterns used in game scripting. Interviewers will assess ability to reason about trade offs, debugging and profiling techniques, and idiomatic language use within an engine context.