UI/UX Software Engineer (C++/Qt)

Wizard Studios Inc is hiring a mid-level UI Software Engineer to build Wizard’s user-facing interface using C++ and Qt. The focus is on delivering timeline and panel experiences that remain responsive on large projects, while iterating weekly based on Story editors’ feedback.

Key Responsibilities

• Build the timeline, panels, and viewers in C++ and Qt, primarily using Qt Widgets and custom-painted components, with QML where it is used.
• Improve perceived performance on large projects by focusing on painting, caching, and responsiveness.
• Ship improvements informed by Story editors’ feedback on a weekly cadence.
• Own moderately scoped features from implementation planning through testing, review, and release.
• Develop reusable widgets, controls, themes, and desktop interaction patterns as the UI modularizes on Wizard Headless.
• Debug issues across widget, painting, QML, and application-logic layers, and write tests.

Required Qualifications

• Production C++ experience: at least three years of professional C++ development, including at least one shipped desktop application. Qt experience is not required, but you will work in it daily and should expect to ramp quickly.
• Complex, stateful UI experience: interfaces connected to application state, data models, and services, rather than only forms or dashboards.
• Custom UI that stays fast: experience building custom-drawn controls or views in any toolkit (Qt, AppKit, JUCE, ImGui, or a game engine UI) while keeping them responsive under real data loads.
• Craft: practical understanding of usability, interaction design, visual hierarchy, and consistency, including the judgment to complete details not fully specified by a mock.
• Creative drive: making things outside of work (films, music, games, art, or tools) and caring about how software looks and feels.
• Video editing fluency: hands-on experience with Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, or similar creative applications.

Technologies

• C++
• Qt, Qt Widgets, QML
• Qt painting
• AppKit, JUCE, ImGui
• Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro

What You Can Show

• Production interfaces built in C++ and/or Qt, with clear visibility into your individual contribution. Dense, interaction-heavy work such as timelines, editors, or node graphs is a strong signal.
• Experience building professional creative software at companies including Blackmagic, Apple Pro Apps, Foundry (Nuke), Autodesk, Ableton, or Maxon, or similar organizations.
• Public source code is not required. The evaluation emphasizes what you built, the decisions you made, and how it worked for users.
• Equivalent professional experience is valued in place of a specific degree. Nice to have includes: cross-platform desktop work, Qt painting and QML profiling, custom rendering, media playback, accessibility, or localization.

About the Role

• This is a mid-level UI Software Engineer position, described as the second front-end engineer to build Wizard’s user-facing features across C++ and Qt.
• You will work with Jack Gardner, Head of Product, who built much of the interface and depends on your work to support product execution.
• The interface is primarily implemented with Qt Widgets and custom-painted Qt components, with growing QML integration.
• Most time is spent in the production codebase.

Why This Role Matters

• The product positioning is “designed by editors, for editors.”
• Resolve parity is a hard requirement, since professional editors cannot switch to software that is only strong due to AI; the base application must be excellent on its own.
• Editors spend substantial daily time in the UI, so the work targets making large projects feel instant and information clear at a glance.

About Wizard

• Wizard is the AI-native platform for creative work, starting with professional video: a native C++ editor and a headless media runtime operated by humans, agents, and developers.
• In roughly six months, the team built a native C++ editor and headless media runtime.
• Oz ingests footage at roughly 300× real time and edits at 30–60× real time, with changes staying inspectable, editable, and reversible.
• Philosophy emphasizes creative as code, with decisions that are editable, controllable, and composable.
• Wizard’s sister company is Story, a production company making video for frontier AI labs and deep-tech companies.
• The team works in person in San Francisco.

Location and Experience

• Location: San Francisco, CA (onsite)
• Minimum experience: 3 years