Research Associate

Job description Working with the National Addiction Centre and the King’s Virtual Reality Team, this role is part of a research project working to develop interactive VR experiences designed to better understand the interaction between person, environment and within-game constructs in gambling, as part of a 4-year funded research project. You should have a good all-round knowledge of Virtual Reality development in Unity3D and ideally come from an academic or research background. Your primary responsibilities will be to translate experimental protocols into fully functional VR applications. A commitment to collaborative problem solving, sophisticated cutting-edge design, and a quality product are essential. The role is 0.4 FTE until July 2026 (negotiable). The position is funded by a UKRI award, led by Dr Steve Sharman. This post will be offered on an a fixed-term contract until July 2026 (to the end of the grant) This is a part-time post - 40% full time equivalent

Key responsibilities

• Develop and optimise VR experiences with a focus on natural interaction with real world objects such as buttons on a gaming (slot) machine.

• Integrating and recording eye tracking and biometric data from a variety of external sensors.

• Programming the application’s simulation of different gaming machines, including statistical manipulation of win/lose states.

• Advise on optimum hardware and software solutions for meeting the experiment’s goals.

• Prototype, design, and implement features based on evolving project requirements.

• Translate design specifications from functional prototypes to a release-ready application

• Design, write, and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable code to ensure the best possible performance, quality, and responsiveness of applications, and identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to address and mitigate these problems

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post. Skills, knowledge, and experience

• PhD in related discipline

• 3+ years of experience with C# and Unity 3D

Essential criteria 1. Excellent all-round knowledge of Unity, including C# scripting, 3D modelling, materials/textures, lighting, animation, UI/UX, and user session management 2. Game design experience including designing user interactions, onboarding tutorials and game mechanics 3. Ability to produce realistic but performant environments (low poly counts, texture atlasing, etc.) 4. Experience of building VR applications for the Oculus, SteamVR or other mainstream platforms 5. Demonstrable and in-depth knowledge of optimisation fundamentals specifically related to desktop VR. Profiling, identifying problems, working within the limitations of the technology and producing game-ready assets 6. Handling and serializing runtime and persistent app data (Json, backend database) 7. Proficient knowledge of code versioning processes and project management (GitHub/SVN, Trello) with a clear understanding of an iterative production cycle and the ability to evaluate the severity of potential issues. 8. Prototyping, user and QA testing, deployment (including app maintenance post release) 9. Modelling or customising existing models (e.g Character Creator). Rigging, facial blend shapes for facial animation 10. Mecanim animator controllers, programmatic character interactions, animation events, blend trees, sub-state machine, layers etc. 11. Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to learn and assimilate new software, techniques and technologies, as required. Desirable criteria 1. Familiarity with the Tobii SDK (Ocumen I/O for Unity) and IMotion biosensor modules and software. 2. Familiarity with hand tracking technologies, e.g. Ultraleap / Ultrasound or Meta's Hand-Tracking 2.0 3. Interfacing Unity with external devices (e.g. real world mechanical switches or levers via Arduino, MIDI or other) 4. Experience of world space object tracking within a virtual environment (Oculus spatial anchors or Vive trackers), and practical knowledge of hand tracking SDKs (Oculus and/or Leap Motion) Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.