Hire the Top 3% of Freelance Virtual Reality Developers

Hiring high-quality virtual reality (VR) developers are critical to the success of your project. Despite the variety of websites offering freelance VR services, there are still challenges that come with getting the right person to fill this role on your team.

You may be a hiring manager for the development team at a large corporation, or a small business looking for a passionate VR developer. In any case, your interview process is an important method for evaluating the talent you seek.

Both art and programming are critical to any immersive virtual reality project. Depending on the culture of your company, art and programming roles may be very tightly defined with little overlap, or very fluid with less distinction between them. This article specifically covers programmers, rather than positions such as 3D modelers, texture artists, and animators.

我们亲自采访了几位行业领袖，讨论了虚拟现实开发面试和招聘的细微差别. The developer that suits your project will be driven by what your VR company does, 但我们所有的消息来源都有共同的特点，即他们想从VR开发者那里得到什么以及他们如何选择采访他们.

Roles

传统的VR工程(无论是否与游戏相关)深受游戏开发和应用开发社区的影响. The roles within the team will often reflect this, but the culture of your company will ultimately decide how you delineate engineering roles within your team. In keeping with the language we encountered speaking to VR hiring managers, we’ve used terms such as “gameplay” and “game.” However, these roles are equally applicable to virtual reality applications that have nothing to do with gaming, such as interactive experiences, movies, and consumer spaces. VR engineering roles typically land in one of three categories:

1. Gameplay Engineers

A gameplay engineer is concerned with the ways in which a user interacts with a VR game and what they experience. They build the world of a game, but not the graphics. In other words, these engineers build the game itself rather than the technology the experience runs on.

Gameplay engineers would be responsible for things such as how the characters within a game experience behave, how the user interacts with the environment in the virtual reality app world, and the navigation of the user within the world.

2. Engine Programmers (or “Core Engine Programmers”)

An engine programmer is almost the exact opposite of a gameplay engineer. These programmers work on the low-level technology that the experience runs on, particularly the 3D technology that renders the experience.

They also focus on ensuring that performance is acceptable. This is especially important in VR, as low frame rates can cause nausea.

In modern VR, 很少有引擎程序员会负责构建能够完整运行游戏体验的引擎. 他们更有可能负责与用于开发游戏的第三方引擎进行低级互动, such as Unity, Unreal, or CryEngine.

3. High-Level Scripting Engineers

Scripting engineers have a similar role to gameplay engineers. They work at a very high level in languages such as Lua or UnrealScript. This is in contrast to gameplay engineers, who work in the same low-level language in which the game is written, usually C++.

In some VR app development environments, particularly Unity, there is less distinction between a high level scripting engineer and a gameplay engineer. This is because gameplay code tends to be written in the higher-level languages supported by Unity, like JavaScript or C#.

Each of the roles described above have formal training. Unlike other software development and programming specializations, 现在很少有人在没有去学校获得编程或计算机科学学位的情况下拥有这些特定的VR开发技能.

Beyond formal training, there are several traits you should hope to see in your candidates as you interview virtual reality developers. If you choose to give your candidate a technical interview, we suggest taking three to four hours.

Collaborative Potential

Any virtual reality experience has a complex real-time system behind it with many moving parts. 具有协作思维的开发人员会考虑到其他团队成员，并意识到工作流程和管道.

Communication is critical, whether you are working in a small company or a large distributed team. 协作团队成员可以独立工作，但也不怕提出相关问题并分享有效推进开发的见解.

Problem Solving

There are several ways to asses problem-solving acumen. As with other technical interviews, posing technical problems during the interview process is a good means to evaluate problem-solving skills. They’re a good tool for drawing out the interviewee’s thoughts on the subject matter. Help when necessary. Ask them to elaborate to glean more details about their thought process.

Some technical problems are universal, applying to any programming role. Others might be more specific to virtual worlds such as camera calculations, rendering problems, and character AI techniques. Additionally, 作为面试官，你应该评估他们对绩效的看法以及问题解决方案的正确性.

3D Math Skills

Some level of 3D math is needed for anyone involved in building a VR experience. That said, the exact level will depend on their role within your team.

Core engine programmers will require in-depth, sophisticated knowledge of all aspects of 3D math. This includes vector and matrix mathematics, and the mathematics of rendering, physics, and shaders.

On the other hand, gameplay and scripting engineers only require basic knowledge of how to use 3D vectors and transformations.

面试的这一部分应该是量身定制的，以挑战他们的3D数学技能，使其适合他们所申请的职位. The questions should attempt to reveal their underlying knowledge of the principles involved, rather than expecting rote knowledge of 3D operations.

一个例子是，他们应该能够分辨出向量积和点积的区别，以及如何使用它们, but not necessarily know the exact sequence of operations to perform a cross product.

Speed

Remember, each frame of your virtual reality experience must run in 16.6 milliseconds, or nausea can result.

Virtual reality, like so much of our experience today, is dependent upon efficiency: Does the code run fast?

In addition to solving problems in 3D space using applied 3D math, the solutions must be graceful. Being mathematically correct is not good enough if the solution is inefficient.

For example, a brute-force solution to a mathematical search problem is unlikely to be practical, even though it’s mathematically correct. If you are presented with a solution like this in an interview, 试着提示受访者在基线蛮力解决方案的基础上进行构建，并将其转化为更高效、更优雅的解决方案.

Optimization is the key to a pleasant user experience. Remember, each frame of your virtual reality experience must run in 16.6 milliseconds, or nausea can result. This requires all members of your team to understand performance and optimization.

There are two aspects of this. 有一个理论上的大o符号——任何计算机科学专业的毕业生都应该理解——你可以用它来表达一个算法在理论上的时间和空间复杂性. But there is also more practical, experiential knowledge that relates code to real-world performance.

The former can be assessed while posing the technical problems discussed in the previous “problem solving” section. Does the interviewee understand the complexity of the solution they present, and how that will impact its theoretical performance?

后者对于低级引擎程序员尤其重要，可以通过询问他们编写的代码对低级性能的影响来评估. Do they understand the performance ramifications of various levels of caching, for example, or the performance characteristics of a CPU versus a GPU?

Desire

A person who is desirous of a position in the field will have examples of passion projects. As an interviewer, 花点时间看看他们在GitHub等开源存储库上发布的源代码的质量，或者他们提供给你的工作示例. Are these projects easily compiled and run?

Desire is often illustrated by enthusiasm and the candidate’s willingness to intrinsically sharpen their skills. 询问他们的兴趣项目和他们为他们编写的代码，以一种让他们透露他们在虚拟现实领域工作的愿望的方式.

A demo reel is not necessarily expected from a programmer, but it’s appreciated. If you are presented with a demo reel, ask questions about the technical details of implementing what is shown in the demo reel.

As mentioned above, depending on the culture of your company, you may have less delineation between VR programming and artistic roles. For any roles with artistic components to them, a demo reel is crucial, so expect to have to do an in-depth evaluation of them for your interview process.

Overall Value

Aside from technical skills and passion, there are some other important aspects to consider in assessing a candidate’s likely overall value to your team.

While you are looking for new team members, you can keep this tidbit in mind: During our interviews, the most common role hired for was a game engineer. The most difficult role to fill was that of a core engine programmer. As you interview talent, it’s important to know their value within the wider technology ecosystem. This will affect the number of competing offers they are likely to receive.

However, regardless of the likelihood of competing offers, you should endeavor to make your interview process as swift as possible. Be efficient about expressing the results to both successful and unsuccessful interviewees.

Existing Skills and Learning Quickly

很明显，最有吸引力的候选人是具备多种技能来填补空缺的人. However, as an interviewer, it might also be helpful to think through whether or not your candidate is teachable. A willingness and demonstrated ability to learn on the job is as important as showing a mastered versatile skillset. Your needs and budget will guide you in this way about the best talent to hire.

Long-Term and Short-Term Approaches

Every team has a budget and schedule including long- and short-term goals. A core engine programmer can be very valuable to your team because they possess a versatile skill set. During the interview process, consider the long- and short-term goals your hire will be able to help shape and sustain.

Some engineers may be excellent at fighting fires, but not necessarily good at re-architecting your technology to meet your long-term goals.

One aim of your interview process should be to establish how the interviewee fits both within your team and schedule. Sometimes your long- and short-term goals may require different hiring decisions. Some engineers may be excellent at fighting fires—i.e., 解决阻止虚拟现实项目发布的即时问题和bug，但不一定擅长重新构建技术以满足长期目标.

Likewise, 对您的虚拟现实技术的体系结构有远见的工程师可能不太适合介入并修复当前阻碍项目完成的高优先级JIRA项目. Your interviews should aim at distinguishing between these two roles within your project.

Not all developers are going to fit neatly into either category. In fact, some may be able to carry out both roles well. As an interviewer, you should be aware of which of these roles you are trying to fill.

要找出善于救火和解决眼前问题的工程师，就和他们谈谈他们工作经历中的类似案例. Drill down into the technical details of difficult problems they have solved in previous jobs. What was the timeline in which those problems were solved? How did they approach solving the problem, and what were their specific contributions to the solution?

For a more visionary, architect role, ask questions to get a feel for their vision for the system as a whole. During prior projects, did they lead the process of producing the system architecture? Are they excited to contribute to the wider design of the software? And finally, are they able to clearly communicate their insights with those working alongside them?

Creative Ability

“Creativity” in VR engineering can be defined in two ways with regards to the interview hiring process. One can be visually creative, e.g., with effects; there is also the marrying of math and art. Someone else can be design-wise creative, enhancing gameplay, tuning character movement timing, making jumping mechanics have the correct feel…the list goes on!

To gain insight into your interviewee’s creative ability, you will need to combine the specific areas we covered earlier: Problem solving, 3D math skills, and desire. Do the answers given reflect a creative outlook in the interviewee, or a more linear way of thinking?

Pushing the Envelope

Virtual reality is a cutting-edge media where the rules are still being written, unlike media such as film where many conventions have been established for nearly a century. VR领域的创意工程师必须准备好编写未来VR创作者将遵循的规则和惯例.

During your interview, inquire about the engineer’s thoughts toward more accessible virtual reality experiences. Ask about their ideas about the sustainability of the field. Their answers should help you gauge how innovative you can expect them to be.

Leveling Up Your Team in the VR Era

Interviewing full-time or part-time VR developers (and AR developers) can be challenging, but with the right lens, you can find the talent you need to compliment your team and realize your vision. In order for the field of virtual reality to grow and thrive, we need to create accessible, high-quality experiences that work with affordable VR technology hardware and VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, or Oculus Rift.

Hunt for like-minded talent with a thirst for innovation, a heart for teamwork, 以及以最少的管理监督进行生产的能力——没有其他方法可以保持在VR应用革命的前沿!

We would like to thank Dave Alpert, CEO at Geopogo; Glen Egan, President and CEO of Sanzaru Games; and Alton Glass, Director and Owner of Glassrock Entertainment for their insights as we put together this article.