Associate Software Engineer, Content Distribution | Candy Crush Soda Saga

Craft

Job Description

Associate Software Engineer, Content Distribution | Candy Crush Soda Saga

King's second largest game, Candy Crush Soda Saga, is loved by millions of players worldwide, matching Swedish fish, rescued Soda gummy bears, and popped soda bottles to win points, defeat obstacles and progress through almost 20,000 levels. We're an iconic team growing a sweeter future for one of the biggest casual mobile IPs in the world through attracting talented people from around the world.

Our ambition is to keep delivering for our players when it comes to creativity, product, and technology.

As an Associate Software Engineer in the Content Distribution team within Candy Crush Soda Saga's Gameplay and Monetisation Domain, you'll help build and improve the systems that keep fresh, high-quality content reaching millions of players.

This is an early-career role: you'll contribute to your team's delivery from the start, working alongside experienced engineers who will support you as you grow your craft in C++ and live game development.

Your Role Within the Kingdom

• Build, test, maintain and optimise features and tooling across Content Distribution's systems - content delivery pipelines, automated level optimisation driven by live player data, AI-driven tooling for level generation and modification, and the broader tooling that level design relies on.
• Take ownership of well-defined tasks and follow through on them reliably, communicating progress, plans and problems as you go.
• Write high-quality, well-structured code, following your team's craft standards, best practices and ways of working.
• Work mainly in C++ while building essential knowledge of the wider tech stack and of the systems behind the features you work on.
• Use AI development tools as part of how you build, debug and review code - never shipping AI-generated code you can't explain, and escalating uncertainty rather than hiding it.
• Collaborate with engineers, level designers, data scientists, product managers and QA, and follow how live issues are investigated and resolved.
• Seek out mentorship, feedback and input from your colleagues, and openly share what you learn back with the team.

Soda is a large, mature C++ codebase delivered to millions of players across mobile, PC and web. You'll work across the game client and the internal tools behind it, alongside King's centralised tech teams.

Skills To Create Thrills

Key Attributes

• Passion for programming, with genuine excitement about building experiences that millions of players enjoy - and curiosity about who those players are and how your work affects them.
• Open to feedback and eager to learn. Asking for help early is how we work, and we'll make that easy for you.
• Collaborative and adaptable, contributing openly in a multi-disciplinary team and helping create an environment where people feel supported.

Experience

• You've built software in a team environment - through work, an internship, academic projects or personal projects.
• You've written code in C++ or a comparable language, and you're excited to keep developing your C++ skills.
• You've delivered defined pieces of work to a good standard, with support and guidance from more experienced colleagues.

What You'll Bring

• Understanding of essential software engineering concepts, and a willingness to follow software architecture principles and engineering best practices.
• Sound coding fundamentals - writing readable, well-structured code and applying effective testing practices, with care for quality and polish.
• Ability to solve well-defined problems using established methods, and to raise ambiguity early rather than working around it.
• Clear verbal and written communication - you can explain what you're working on, why it matters, and where you're stuck.

What You'll Build Here

We don't expect these on day one - they're what the first year looks like.

• Working knowledge of a large, long-lived C++ codebase and the tooling around it.
• Comfort using AI development tools (e.g. Claude Code, Copilot), with the judgment to ask "is this correct?" before shipping.
• A feel for working in an experimentation-driven environment, where live player data and A/B test results guide what the team builds next.
• Finding your way around documentation at this scale, and contributing to it.

How We Work

Our Team First, Hybrid Working model empowers teams across the Kingdom to decide how they want to work together, with a mix of in office and home working.

If you're excited about this role but don't meet every single requirement, we'd still love to hear from you. We know that candidates from underrepresented backgrounds may hesitate to apply unless they match every point, and we're interested in your potential as well as your experience.

About King

With a mission of Making the World Playful, King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world with more than 20 years of history of delivering some of the world’s most iconic games in the mobile gaming industry, including the world-famous Candy Crush franchise, as well as other mobile titles such as Farm Heroes Saga. King games are played by more than 200 million monthly active users.

King, part of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has Kingsters in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Malta. More information can be found at King.com or by following us on LinkedIn and @lifeatking on Instagram.