Ellie Arrowsmith
Current Employer/Organisation Name
Frontier Developments
What have you been doing since leaving Exeter, and what are you doing now?
I applied to join Frontier 6 months after graduating and have stayed with the company since. I originally joined the quality assurance team and worked my way up to leading my own team before moving to the coding department to work as an automation engineer.
As an automation engineer I write test scripts to take on the time-intensive tasks involved with game development. These test scripts can range from validating core game loops every hour to calculating the performance impact of weather systems on all game maps each night. My efforts in driving forward the performance testing in particular have granted me promotions from ‘junior automation engineer’ to ‘full’ to ‘senior’ within the two years I’ve been in the department. Some examples of the games I’ve worked on have been Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster 2 and Jurassic Evolution 3.
Why did you choose this career? And what do you enjoy most about your work?
I chose to join Frontier (and by extension the video game industry) for the simple reason that I love video games. I’m quite lucky that most days at work do not feel like work at all, I’m playing and working on games long before they are ever announced to the public. I get a lot of enjoyment out of problem solving, turning a test request from the development team into a script which can run automatically as many times as they wish. I’ve also been granted dedicated development time to work on new ways of visualising performance data beyond spreadsheets and line graphs.
Please tell us if you were a member of any societies, groups or sports clubs?
I was a member of the Archery club & BodySoc.
What did you enjoy most about your programme and what was the biggest highlight?
I most enjoyed the practical lab time, running experiments, collecting data and presenting results is just my bread and butter. I think the biggest highlight was the module in electronics, specifcially the section of electronic logic. I’d never done anything like that before and it just clicked with me, I think has been the catalyst for my success in my current job.
What did you most enjoy about studying here?
I met my best friends while at Exeter and will forever cherish the memories we made together there.
Why did you choose to study at Exeter?
Exeter was one of the top universities in the UK to study physics which is why I applied, but I knew from the moment I visited on my interview day. The campus was wonderful and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to study in Devon.
What skills and experiences have been most useful for your career?
The modules specifically relevant were Electronics and Programming in C though other skills have also been especially beneficial such as problem solving, data collection, data analysis and data presentation.
What advice would you give to a current student who wishes to pursue your career?
The best advice for getting any job within the game industry is to have a good understanding of how games are made. That could be joining test servers for live service games or building your own game with Godot, showing off your dedication to games beyond simply being a player is what will set you apart from everyone else.
What are your plans for the future?
I will be developing new systems of capturing and presenting game performance to the development team. I’ll also potentially have the opportunity next year to present the automation team’s work at the Game Quality Forum.
