While a job in game development or film is the ultimate goal for most of you, many industries utilize the same skill set. These could be your dream location or a good stepping stone on your way to games. Either way, remember to be open to those opportunities.

Here are a couple places to start (but there are SO MANY MORE THAN THIS…this is just a beginning!)

Government jobs: These can be military contractors, Department of Defense, etc.

The main location to find these jobs is at the following site. It can be a little tricky to find the kind of job that utilizes your skills and interests, so search under different terms

https://www.usajobs.gov/

for instance, when I looked up animation, it came up with a student jobs list of 8 different locations looking for interns, some of which are for illustrators and animators. Because of the broad scale and large number of positions in the federal government, you may have to spend some time digging a little deeper.

Another location for government contract work is a company called SAIC. http://www.saic.com/about/careers/

They have several companies that do different types of government IT and Technology jobs, currently they have 1300 jobs listed in the US. One of their studios is America’s Army, a company in Huntsville, AL that makes the official Army Game. I know the creative director at this studio, so if you apply for any openings, let me know and I will pass on your name.

Also look into industries that you know use your skills: Advertising, Simulation, Production Studios, Toy companies, Shoe companies…this list can become very long once you realize how many places use 3d art and animation as well as game programming. Many companies are moving to VR for their training, so they will have openings for developers to create this training.

3D printing is it’s own industry as companies use these studios for prototyping and small batch production. Whiteclouds is a company in Utah, for instance, that does a wide range of design work https://ss.whiteclouds.com/#home

Toy companies have both production and design jobs as well as often having a game development division. The large companies have internships every summer as well as periodically posting full time positions.

Mattel: http://careers.mattel.com/

Hasbro: https://jobs.hasbro.com/

Lego: https://www.lego.com/en-us/careers

Tomy toys: https://tomy.com/careers

Wham-O: https://wham-o.com/careers/

https://www.naughtydog.com/careers

Bethesda Games Studios in Austin has several job openings:

https://jobs.zenimax.com/locations/view/53

Arkane Studios also has several openings:

https://jobs.zenimax.com/locations/view/3

Bad Rhino Games

Careers

One of the closest large studios to SAU is in Frisco. They do not currently have any internships open, but do have several job openings, mostly designers and programmers right now. Artists keep looking, they could be hiring artists soon. They look like they are perhaps ramping up on a project…

http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/careers/#career_opportunities

Here is information about a few of their jobs.

Level Designer – Pretty self-explanatory; they’re seeking a number of these.

Mission Designer – 3-4 openings. Preferably senior for their current project, but they’ll definitely need more for upcoming work.

Animation Programmer – Great position for a programmer to launch a career in animation programming. (Side note: animation programmers will virtually NEVER have a hard time being employed)

Junior Server Programmer – Backend server team. Seeking about 10 backend server programmers from all ranges of seniority. “Recent graduates could absolutely do the work, though they don’t have the language requirements. (Ruby, Go)”

Online Programmer – Major hiring push. Working on primarily Online and Platform related systems. Also commonly help support networked gameplay features. Currently, involved with a lot of cool Online, Social, and Hobby gameplay systems. (Side note: just like animation programmers, this is a HIGHLY marketable skill set and is in very high demand, hence the need to fill the positions)

Systems Programmer – Anyone interested in gameplay programming should also look at this position.

UI Tools Programmer – Not entirely sure what this one is all about but they’re always looking for UI programmers because of how much UI they typically have in their games.