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

Wizard Studios Inc is building a C++ and Qt user interface for professional creative workflows. This mid-level role focuses on the timeline, panels, and viewers, with an emphasis on fast interactions on large projects and weekly improvements driven by Story editors’ feedback.

Role Responsibilities

• Build the timeline, panels, and viewers in C++ and Qt, primarily using Qt Widgets and custom-painted components, with QML where applicable.
• Deliver interactions that feel instant on large projects through painting, caching, and overall responsiveness.
• Ship UI improvements informed by Story editors’ feedback on a weekly cadence.
• Own moderately scoped features from implementation planning through testing, review, and release.
• Develop reusable UI building blocks including widgets, controls, themes, and desktop interaction patterns as the interface becomes modular on Wizard Headless.
• Debug across widget, painting, QML, and application-logic layers and write tests.

Requirements

• Production C++: at least three years of professional C++ development, including at least one shipped desktop application. Qt experience is not required, but the expectation is to become fluent quickly.
• Complex, stateful UI: interfaces connected to application state, data models, and services, not only forms or dashboards.
• Custom UI performance: experience building custom-drawn controls or views in toolkits such as Qt, AppKit, JUCE, ImGui, or a game engine UI, while keeping them responsive with real data loads.
• Craft: practical understanding of usability, interaction design, visual hierarchy, and consistency, plus judgment to complete details beyond a mock.
• Creative drive: personal involvement in making things such as films, music, games, art, or tools, with attention to look and feel.
• 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 to Include When Applying

• Production interfaces built in C++ and/or Qt, with clear detail on your individual contribution.
• Examples of interaction-heavy work such as timelines, editors, or node graphs.
• Work experience that demonstrates building pro creative software, including companies such as Blackmagic, Apple Pro Apps, Foundry (Nuke), Autodesk, Ableton, Maxon, or similar.
• Clarity on decisions and outcomes, since public source code is not required.

Role Context and Team

This is a mid-level UI Software Engineer position and the second front-end engineer on the team. You will build Wizard’s user-facing features across C++ and Qt, working closely with Jack Gardner, Head of Product, who built much of the interface. Your work is intended to free him to focus on product.

Wizard’s interface is primarily built with Qt Widgets and custom-painted Qt components, with growing QML integration. The toolkit is central, and much of your time will be spent in the production codebase.

Location and Experience Level

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

About Wizard

Wizard is an AI-native platform for creative work, starting with professional video: a native C++ editor and a headless media runtime that humans, agents, and developers operate. In roughly six months, the team built a native C++ editor and a headless media runtime.

Oz ingests footage at roughly 300× real time and edits at 30–60× real time. Changes it makes stay inspectable, editable, and reversible. The company’s philosophy is creative as code, emphasizing decisions that remain editable, controllable, and composable.

Wizard works in person in San Francisco. The sister company is Story, a production company making video for frontier AI labs and deep-tech companies.