Pokemon Developer Game Freak is Looking to Expand with Nearly 40 New Roles

Pokemon developer Game Freak is looking to expand significantly, by the looks of at. Spotted by DenFamiNico Gamer (via Siliconera), the Japanese company is set to hold a new recruitment campaign at the end of the month through which it’s lookin to hire in a large number of open positions.

In total, the company is looking to recruit in a total of 37 open positions, across disciplines ranging from programming and design to art and more. Several of the open positions specifically mention that they will be focused on development of Pokemon titles, with some being dedicated to new internal IP, others to research and development, and more.

As of March earlier this year, Game Freak had a total of 207 employees, so adding 37 new roles to that would represent growth of nearly 18 percent for the studio. It’s worth mentioning, however, that several of the new positions are set to be contract roles instead of permanent ones.

With the Nintendo Switch’s successor set to be announced (and presumably released) in the coming months, it’s no surprise that studios focused on developing Switch titles are ramping up and expanding, especially amidst insistent reports that the upcoming console will support 4K and thus require more complex development pipelines.

After Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s controversial launch in 2022, The Pokemon Company and Nintendo had to issue an apology for the technical state of the launch, before assuring later that it was looking into ways to improve the state of future releases while still maintaining a packed release schedule. Earlier this year, reports claimed that the company was looking to take serious steps to avoid the technical issues that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet faced at launch.

You can find a full list of Game Freak’s open positions below:

• Planner
• Planner (scenario/setting creation)
• [Contract] Sound Planner (Pokemon series development)
• Character Model
• Effects
• Background Model
• Cutscenes
• Section Director
• Lighting Artist
• Human Motion
• Pokemon Models
• 2D Art Designer
• 2D Art Designer: Background
• [Contract] 2D Artwork Designer (Pokemon series development)
• Project Manager
• [Contract] Assistant Project Manager
• Game Programmer
• Game Programmer: Communication System
• [Contract] Game Programmer: Characters (New IP)
• [Contract] Game Programmer: Events (New IP)
• [Contract] UI Programmer (New IP)
• [Contract] Communication Game Programmer (Pokemon series development)
• [Contract] Unity Engineer (Assigned to R&D Department)
• [Contract] Animation Programmer (Assigned to R&D Department)
• [Contract] Infrastructure Engineer (Server)
• [Contract] Information Systems: Windows Infrastructure Engineer
• R&D Programmer: Communication Systems
• R&D Programmer: Animation
• R&D Programmer: Machine Learning Engineer
• R&D Programmer: Graphics
• R&D Programmer: Systems
• R&D Programmer: Battle Systems
• R&D Programmer: Libraries
• Technical Artist: Procedural
• Technical Artist: Tools
• HR and Recruitment
• [Contract] IT Help Desk