Oculus has always had a presence in the UK and, by extension, Europe, but it looks like it’s about to grow that presence in a big way.
The Telegraph recently reported that the VR specialist is growing its team in London, with eight of its 12 members having signed-up in the past six months. They’ve joined long-established developer relations staff among other engineers. Oculus itself confirmed to the publication that it will have more to share on its international plans “soon”, but searching for jobs in the UK capital now digs up some interesting details.
Right now the company is looking for an experienced Product Design Lead to join this growing team. According to a job listing, the successful candidate will be working on “conceptualizing the next generation of the VR platform” on both the PC and mobile fronts (or Rift and Gear, as we know them). They’ll be creating a “cutting edge VR experience” and will “own a wide area of the Oculus experience”. Work will include “designing, researching, prototyping, and implementing features for incremental changes as well as future iterations of the product.”
From the sounds of it, the London-based team will be instrumental in both the maintaining and growth of the overall Oculus platform, which covers crucial features like the Oculus Home store in which content is bought and the online ecosystem that supports it. Tellingly, the job requires experience with Android mobile, suggesting a strong emphasis on Gear VR, which runs on Android-powered Samsung smartphones.
Oculus London is also looking for at least five years’ experience in shipping software and at least two years’ experience as a manager, lead, mentor and/or UX director.
Expanding the Oculus team outside of the UK will allow the company to grow its outreach and be active 24/7; it’s only surprising that it’s taken this much time to get round to it. The company is already facing stiff competition from all areas of the VR industry, especially with Google’s newly-announced Daydream mobile platform so closely resembling what it helped establish on Gear VR but for a much wider range of phones. How the company plans to stay ahead on the platform front will be one of VR’s most interesting stories going forward.
