Company: Cloud Imperium Games · Role: Embedded QA Specialist - Tools · Oct 2025 to present
Cloud Imperium Games makes Star Citizen and Squadron 42. I’m the main embedded QA supporting the Engine and Tools teams, working directly with the engineers on the in-house tools, backend systems and pipelines the games are built with.
The Tools team makes the software every other department uses to build the game, so the people using what I test are the studio’s own developers, artists and designers. When a tool breaks, it can hold up a whole department.
What I do
- Test the in-house development tools and give feedback, to keep the content pipeline stable and quick to work with.
- Write, run and maintain test cases that help pin down complex technical problems, and tidy up testing processes for teams in different studios.
- Own test coverage for the tools: deciding what gets tested first, and being the person accountable for its quality.
- Take part in regular playtests and pass on what I find.
- Keep the QA documentation up to date: test data, known issues and environment setups.
- Act as the main contact for Tools QA, and report risks, progress and test status to leadership and the wider teams.
- Dig into problems with Perforce and Jira to find conflicts and reproduce tricky issues, so developers can fix them faster.
How it’s different
Testing tools isn’t the same as testing a game. A bug in a game affects players. A bug in a tool affects the people making the game, and it adds up quickly when a whole team is waiting on a fix. The feedback is instant too, because the people using what I test sit in the same company.
A tool can also work perfectly and still be slow or awkward to use, and that costs time for everyone who uses it, so I report usability problems as well as bugs. With teams in several studios and time zones, clear documentation is a big part of the job.
It’s the most technical QA role I’ve had, working alongside development rather than at the end of it. It’s also changed how I think about pipelines and developer experience, which helped when I was building Skill Check’s content pipeline and release process.
Tools
Perforce, Jira, Cloud Imperium’s in-house development tools and pipelines, and PC.
This page describes my role in general terms only. It contains no confidential details about Cloud Imperium Games' internal tools, unreleased features or development processes.