Work with us.

Interactive Graphics Engineer

Stimulant is regularly asked to create never-before-seen experiences on never-before-seen hardware, and we’re seeking a talented and open-minded developer to join us on this journey. We’re looking for someone with a desire to continually push the envelope and inspire our team by bringing a spirit of exploration and a fresh bag of tricks to the table, while still delivering bulletproof, thoughtfully-architected code. You’ll join an equally talented team that will challenge you in new and exciting ways, in an environment that’s filled with healthy communication, transparency, and support.

The following is a list of technologies and solutions that we’ve explored or are on our short list for upcoming projects and experiments. We hope you’ve dabbled in some of these, and have the interest and passion to dive into the pieces that are new for you:

• Large-format, multi-screen, high-framerate user interfaces
• 3D sensing and computer vision
• Emergent UI paradigms such as touch, gestural, and beyond
• 2D/3D interface development in low-level languages/frameworks such as:
  • OpenGL
  • Direct3D
  • C/C++/Objective C
  • Processing
  • Cinder
• Mobile/device frameworks such as:
  • Windows Phone 7
  • iOS
  • Android
  • WebOS
• Display/Projector seaming
• Projection mapping
• Procedural graphics
• Stereoscopic displays
• Distributed real-time rendering
• Particle systems
• Physics simulations
• Pixel shaders
• Arduino/hardware hacking
• Any number of things we’re not even aware of yet…

Growth and learning is a core part of our ethos, and to that end we encourage and fund ongoing training and personal development, public speaking opportunities within peer groups and at conferences, frequent outside collaboration and knowledge-sharing, open-sourcing of code, and more. On each project, you’ll work side-by-side with an inspiring and technical-minded creative team and well-organized project managers, and your opinion is valued at every step of the project. Our promise is to bring engaging problems and great clients to the table, and you’ll be a strong voice in which projects we take on and how we approach each solution – one of the key benefits of our small size. But don’t let our size fool you – our client list is rich with Fortune 500 companies, including HP, Microsoft, Intel, SAP, Kodak, Reebok and more.

While we’re always excited to fit a new personality into our equation, we’re looking for someone who has the following attributes as a baseline:

• A core desire to use code to create transformative moments
• An exacting attention to detail
• The ability to manage multiple simultaneous projects (prior agency and/or freelance experience a plus)
• Excellent oral and written communications skills
• Tons of personal initiative and a desire for deep collaboration
• Familiarity with various project/team collaboration tools
• A portfolio of past projects and samples of code that you’re especially proud of
• Professional references that you’d be comfortable having us chat with

Given the dependencies on physical hardware, this position will require a regular physical presence in either our SF or Seattle office. That said, we are open to discussing relocation benefits for the right candidate, but at this time we are currently unable to entertain candidates without valid U.S. citizenship.

Please forward resume and relevant background information to jobs@stimulant.io. No calls, please.

Project Manager

Project Managers guide a project from inception to launch, ensuring that projects are delivered on-time and on budget according to the defined scope, timeline and cost parameters. You’ll be involved in navigating new technology, prestigious clients, brilliant designers and developers, and producing beautifully polished end results. You’ll be able to bring your process best-practices to our team as well as learn from our style. At the end of the day, you’ll help Stimulant consistently turn dreams and fictions into elegant realities, and your input and oversight will help shape it all.

This role is the right fit for you if your attention to detail is unmatched, you can easily transform a dynamic brainstorm into an itemized list, and you get energized checking items off a list. You’ll be involved in every step of the project, from estimates and schedule creation to weekly management of clients and your team, all the way through to project launch. We’re looking for someone who can speak fluently with developers and designers, who can comprehend interaction design wireframes, and doesn’t shy away from technical conversations. You will be expected to manage multiple projects simultaneously. If the energy and excitement of a small company doing cutting-edge and never-before-seen work excites you, you’ve found the right home.

A project manager at Stimulant will:

• Manage project scope, schedule, deliverables, and client expectations
• Track all specifications, features, change orders, and other project documentation
• Formulate communication plans and project schedules to keep all eyes on the final goals and constraints
• Deeply collaborate with project team members, business development, and accounting
• Balance being a project team advocate with the needs and requests of the client
• Conduct internal project meetings and help build team consensus on challenging issues
• Ensure efficient and consistent meeting times with client and internal teams
• Take ownership of the tactical project plan while accepting the input of the whole team
• Guarantee timely delivery of invoices
• Negotiate with all parties to ensure the balance of schedule, features, and budget
• Shepherd the project’s vision through attention to detail, strategic and tactical planning, and supporting the internal team
• Conduct project post-mortems to ensure future process improvements

The ideal candidate will have

• A demonstrated ability to multi-task, organize, and improve process
• Flawless written and verbal communication
• Experience keeping projects on time and on budget
• Ability to handle stress with aplomb and, above all, humor
• Extreme comfort with asking questions, negotiation, raising flags, and navigating conflict
• Comfort and skill adapting to dynamic situations
• Extensive experience in the services industry
• Confidence with new technologies
• A passion for process, no matter how pragmatic or polished
• Talent with prioritizing, issue tracking, and scheduling
• Effective risk management strategies
• Fluency with the Windows operating system, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, and a variety of hosted project management tools such as Basecamp, Harvest, Trac, and the like.

UI Developer

UI developers at Stimulant are responsible for taking projects from a blank slate to a full application that functions according to the specified project requirements, with a healthy dose of the developer’s own creative touch. You’ll take part in project brainstorms, planning, and prototyping. You’ll actively work with the user experience team to identify technically feasible approaches to client’s problems. You’ll then be responsible for principal development on the project, working solo or in concert with other developers. As things wrap up, you’ll work with the QA team to debug and document your work.

As our projects routinely mix familiar territory with the never-before-seen, you should feel as comfortable retooling an existing project for a new client as you do venturing into uncharted waters. Our developers are responsible for bringing the creative vision to life, and as such have design-minded sensibilities and a keen eye for pixel-perfection. We’re looking for someone who thinks visually, and who puts as much time into the elegance of his/her code as he/she does into the end-user experience. Most of your time will be spent programming user interfaces, but you’ll likely end up pushing the boundaries of OS and or back-end integration as well. While it’s expected that you’ll have your own tools and processes for coding, you should be comfortable both adapting to and recommending best practices for the entire team. We’re less concerned about how long you’ve been working; we’re looking for well-honed skills and a portfolio of past projects that you’re proud of. It’s important that you’ve had experience executing paid work, however, as these types of projects present a unique set of time-constraints and pressures that will be critical to your success in this environment.

We’re looking for folks with:

• an exacting attention to detail
• the ability to manage multiple simultaneous projects (prior agency and/or freelance experience a plus)
• excellent oral and written communications skills
• a proactive, team-player attitude
• familiarity with various project/team collaboration tools such as Basecamp, Harvest, Google Apps, and the like.
• a portfolio of past projects, including WPF and/or Silverlight and/or XNA technologies
• the ability to come up to speed on new technologies quickly
• a high level of comfort with Microsoft Windows, the Microsoft Expression tools, Visual Studio, the C# programming language, and source control and bug tracking systems
• Basic web development skills, experience with C++ and/or Objective C, and an interest in hacking off-the-shelf hardware into new configurations are a plus.
• Real-world experience working with multi-touch, multi-user and gestural UI are a big win.

This position can be filled in either our Seattle or San Francisco offices.

Interaction Designer

We’re looking for an interaction/UX designer in our San Francisco office. If you can wrap your head around beyond-the-desktop, next-generation interaction paradigms, can communicate as well as you design, can learn quickly, and can use humor to carry yourself through tough challenges, well, we should talk.

Interaction designers at Stimulant are responsible for the killer ideas, overarching concepts, and niggling details of the user experience for devices, installations, and more. They’re more makers than researchers. It’s likely that one’s daily challenges are those that few have ever faced before, and around which there are few best practices. They embrace new concepts like the Natural User Interface, while leveraging past experience and forward-looking experimentation to arrive at the right designs for the problems at hand.

We’re looking for creative professionals who:

• Have a passion for the science and the craft of interaction design
• Be able to easily switch between the mile-high view and the deepest functional details
• Understand technology at a deep level, even though they don’t write code
• Have utmost respect, and interest in, other disciplines, from creative to technical
• Have at least 5-7 years of demonstrable interaction design experience
• Have a broad cross-section of software tool experience (Visio, Graffle, Illustrator) and are equally cool with MacOS and Windows
• Ideally have experience designing interfaces well beyond the Web, with a big bonus for previous multi-touch/gestural UI experience
• Be process-oriented, but not a process purist
• Thrive in small, ultra-creative environments