At Product Madness, a Software Engineer plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of social mobile gaming. As one of the world's largest mobile game studios, the company focuses on delivering highly engaging, top-tier free-to-play social casino games to millions of active players globally. In this role, you are not just writing code; you are building the core mechanics, real-time multiplayer systems, and backend integrations that power massive, high-performance gaming ecosystems.

Your work directly impacts user retention, game performance, and player satisfaction. You will tackle complex technical challenges, such as optimizing rendering pipelines, managing high-concurrency server environments, and ensuring seamless cross-platform functionality. Working closely with cross-functional teams of game artists, product managers, and UI/UX designers, you will translate creative visions into stable, scalable, and high-performing game features.

This position is ideal for engineers who thrive in fast-paced, collaborative environments and are passionate about game development, systems architecture, and robust coding standards. Whether optimizing existing systems or architecting new gameplay features from scratch, your contributions will directly influence the entertainment experience of millions of players worldwide.

The following questions are representative of what you can expect during the hiring process at Product Madness. These questions have been compiled from real candidate experiences to highlight key patterns and core competencies evaluated by the engineering team, rather than serving as a simple list for memorization.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) & Language Fundamentals

This category tests your core understanding of software engineering principles, memory management, and language-specific mechanics in C# or C++.

• Explain the four main pillars of Object-Oriented Programming and how you have applied them in your past projects.
• What is the difference between a class and a struct in C#, and how do they impact memory allocation (stack vs. heap)?

Preparing for an interview at Product Madness requires a balanced approach that covers core computer science fundamentals, platform-specific game development expertise, and behavioral readiness. You should approach your preparation by focusing on how to demonstrate deep technical competence while maintaining a highly collaborative and user-centric mindset.

Here are the key evaluation criteria that the hiring team will use to assess your candidacy:

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a strong grasp of game engineering principles, specifically within Unity, C#, or C++. Interviewers will look for your ability to write clean, maintainable code that adheres to industry-standard design patterns and OOP principles.

Problem-Solving Ability – You will be evaluated on how you approach ambiguous technical challenges. The team values candidates who can break down complex problems, analyze trade-offs between different data structures, and write highly optimized algorithms.

Collaboration & Communication – Game development is a highly collaborative team sport. You need to show that you can communicate complex technical ideas clearly to both technical peers and non-technical stakeholders, such as game artists and producers.

Culture Fit & Adaptability – Product Madness operates in a dynamic, rapidly evolving industry. You should demonstrate a passion for gaming, a strong desire to learn, and the resilience needed to adapt to shifting project requirements and user feedback.

The interview process at Product Madness is known for being exceptionally streamlined, transparent, and candidate-friendly. The studio prides itself on a rapid turnaround time, often taking a candidate from the initial application to a final offer in less than a week. Throughout the process, recruiters maintain clear lines of communication, providing regular updates and actively seeking your feedback.

The journey typically begins with a conversational screening call, which quickly transitions into technical evaluations. The studio places a strong emphasis on practical coding skills and architectural thinking, utilizing online coding platforms for algorithmic testing alongside live, collaborative coding sessions with senior engineering staff.

The visual timeline above illustrates the typical progression a candidate goes through, from the initial touchpoint to the final decision. Candidates should use this timeline to pace their preparation, ensuring they are ready for algorithmic coding early on, followed by deep technical discussions and behavioral preparation. While the exact sequence can vary slightly by location or team, this structure represents the standard engineering pipeline.

To succeed at Product Madness, you must perform consistently across several core evaluation areas. Below is a detailed breakdown of what to expect in each area, what strong performance looks like, and how to prepare.

Game Engine & OOP Fundamentals (Unity / C# / C++)

For client-facing or full-stack roles, demonstrating a deep, native understanding of your primary development tools is critical. The interviewers want to see that you understand what is happening under the hood of the game engine and the programming language.

Be ready to go over:

• Memory Management – Stack vs. heap allocation, object pooling, garbage collection mitigation, and reference vs. value types.
• Engine Lifecycle & Architecture – The internal execution order of game loops, scene management, and component-based design patterns.
• OOP & Design Patterns – Singleton, Factory, Observer, and State patterns, and how they apply to game development.

Example scenarios:

• Designing a decoupled UI event system using the Observer pattern in C#.
• Explaining how to refactor a legacy codebase that suffers from severe frame drops due to excessive garbage collection.

Data Structures & Algorithms (Online Test & Live Coding)

You will face an online technical assessment where you must solve classic data structure and algorithmic problems. This is followed by a live coding session where you will collaborate with a senior engineer to solve a problem in real time.

Be ready to go over:

• Core Data Structures – Arrays, HashMaps, Lists, Queues, Stacks, and Trees.
• Algorithm Optimization – Sorting, searching, and recursion, with a strong focus on optimizing time and space complexity (Big O notation).
• String and Array Manipulation – Efficiently parsing, filtering, and restructuring data on the fly.

Advanced concepts (less common):

• Custom memory allocators in C++
• Complex graph traversal (Dijkstra's or A*) for custom game mechanics

Example scenarios:

• Writing a highly optimized function to find the shortest path for a character on a grid.
• Implementing a custom queue structure to handle incoming network packets for a multiplayer game lobby.

Technical Talk & System Design

In this round, you will engage in a technical discussion about your past experiences, architectural choices, and system design. The team wants to understand how you structure code at scale and how you make technical decisions.

Be ready to go over:

• Scalable Architecture – Designing game systems that can easily accommodate new features, events, and assets.
• Performance Profiling – Utilizing profilers to identify CPU, GPU, and memory bottlenecks in a live game build.
• API & Backend Integration – How game clients communicate with backend servers, handle state synchronization, and manage offline play.

Example scenarios:

• Architecting a modular inventory system that supports thousands of unique items and real-time database syncing.
• Discussing how you would profile and optimize a game that is experiencing severe thermal throttling on mobile devices.