Senior Rendering Engineer (C++ / OpenGL)
Beyond All Reason · Recoil RTS Engine
github.com/beyond-all-reason/RecoilEngine
beyondallreason.info
Contract
About Beyond All Reason
Beyond All Reason is a large-scale open-source real-time strategy game built on the Recoil RTS Engine. As we prepare for our Steam release, we are modernising the engine’s rendering capabilities to support a new generation of units, environments and visual effects while preserving compatibility with the game’s extensive existing content.
We’re looking for an experienced Rendering Engineer to help evolve Recoil’s renderer and graphics systems. This is an opportunity to work on a mature C++ engine, collaborate directly with artists and gameplay programmers, and help define the future technical direction of the renderer.
The Role
The Recoil renderer already supports physically based rendering and a broad range of modern graphics techniques. Our current focus is extending those capabilities to support the next generation of assets being created for Beyond All Reason.
This is not a greenfield renderer. The engineering challenge is evolving an established OpenGL renderer while maintaining compatibility with a large existing codebase and asset library.
You’ll work closely with artists, technical artists and engine developers to design, prototype and implement rendering systems that integrate naturally into the engine and support both new and legacy content.
The technical art team can provide design specifications in a variety of forms, including written documentation and working HLSL shader implementations developed in Unreal Engine. You’ll collaborate to translate those concepts into efficient OpenGL/GLSL implementations suitable for Recoil while respecting the engine’s architecture and backwards compatibility requirements.
Immediate Projects
These projects are driven by the requirements of Beyond All Reason’s next-generation asset pipeline. The successful candidate will work closely with the technical art team to identify the engine changes needed to support new rendering workflows while preserving compatibility with existing content.
Current priorities
- Current priorities
- Designing and implementing GPU skeletal animation support for the new Raptor units featured throughout the single-player campaign.
- Extending Recoil’s physically based rendering (PBR) pipeline to better support modern material workflows, including albedo, normal, metallic, roughness, ambient occlusion and emissive textures.
- Expanding the engine’s shader and material systems to support new artistic requirements.
- Enhancing terrain rendering through material blending, vertex painting and biome-aware shading techniques.
- Improving atmospheric rendering and other visual systems required by the evolving art pipeline.
- Profiling and optimising rendering performance for large-scale RTS gameplay.
Technical Environment
You’ll primarily be working with:
- Modern C++
- OpenGL 4.3 Compatibility Profile (with selective use of newer extensions where appropriate)
- GLSL
- SDL
- Windows and Linux
Development takes place within an established open-source engine with an existing rendering architecture, asset pipeline and active contributor community.
Who this role suits. This role is particularly well suited to engineers who enjoy bridging the gap between technical art and engine development — turning visual prototypes into performant, production-quality rendering systems within the constraints of a mature game engine.
What We’re Looking For
We’re looking for someone with substantial experience designing and extending real-time rendering systems. You should have experience across several of the following areas:
- Modern C++ development
- OpenGL rendering architecture
- GLSL shader programming
- Physically based rendering (PBR)
- HDR rendering and post-processing
- GPU resource management
- Skeletal animation and GPU skinning
- Terrain rendering and material systems
- Rendering performance optimisation
- GPU debugging and graphics profiling
Experience with Recoil is not required. We’re far more interested in your ability to understand an existing renderer, design robust technical solutions and implement them within an established codebase.
What You’ll Be Doing
As a senior engineer, you’ll be expected to:
- Design and implement new rendering capabilities within Recoil.
- Work closely with artists and technical artists to translate visual goals into robust engine features.
- Adapt documented rendering workflows and reference HLSL shaders into efficient GLSL implementations.
- Propose technical solutions rather than simply implementing predefined specifications.
- Balance modern rendering techniques against the constraints of an established engine.
- Maintain compatibility with existing assets wherever practical.
- Write maintainable, production-quality C++ suitable for long-term development.
- Collaborate with a distributed team working asynchronously across multiple time zones.
Engineering Challenges
Rendering for a large-scale RTS presents very different challenges from character-focused games.
Beyond All Reason battles can involve hundreds or even thousands of simultaneously active units, placing significant demands on rendering performance, memory usage and scalability. New rendering systems must deliver improved visual fidelity while remaining efficient across battles of every scale.
The successful candidate will help modernise the renderer while ensuring the engine continues to perform reliably across the wide variety of content accumulated throughout the project’s development.
Nice to Have
Experience in one or more of the following areas would be advantageous:
- Open-source game engines
- Compute shaders
- Animation systems
- Terrain rendering
- Cross-platform graphics development
- Graphics debugging tools such as RenderDoc, Nsight Graphics or similar
- RTS engines or simulation-heavy games
Why Join Us?
This is an opportunity to make a lasting contribution to the future of Beyond All Reason.
Rather than implementing isolated graphics features, you’ll help shape the rendering architecture of an established RTS engine as it evolves to support a significantly more ambitious visual direction for its Steam release. Your work will directly influence the capabilities available to artists, enable the next generation of game assets, and become part of the long-term technical foundation of the Recoil RTS Engine.