Students, graduates and freelancers
Most of Us Started Here
Apart from the three founders, everyone at Shiverbug came in through our internship intake with Teesside University, and most of them are on it right now. If you're a Teesside student or graduate weighing up where to put your name, this page is the honest version of how that works.
The Teesside Route
We take students and graduates from Teesside University through the university's own placements and internships scheme, and we've done it every year we've existed, which, to be straight with you, is not yet very many years. The studio was founded in 2025. Nearly everyone on the team page came in this way.
The route runs through the university rather than through us. We tell Teesside what we're after, they advertise it to students on the relevant courses and send us CVs and covering letters, and we shortlist and interview from those. So the useful thing you can do is be in the pool when we post a role: keep an eye on Student Futures and apply there when something of ours appears.
Who's Here Through It
These aren't testimonials. They're people on the intake right now, with a line each about what they brought and a profile a click away.
-
Kyle Kerr
Level Designer
Shipped Fallout 76: Burning Springs as a placement level designer in 2025, then graduated from Teesside in 2026. He had been building levels for a decade before that, starting in Halo: Reach's Forge.
-
Oliver Neal
Gameplay Programmer
First Class Honours in Games Development, and a final-year project that won Teesside's Best Games Programming award. Writes the gameplay in Unity and C#.
-
Charlie Ashall
Level Designer
First Class Honours in Game Design, working in Unreal and Unity, and taking a masters in Game Design alongside the job.
-
Evan Atherton-Elphick
Character Artist
First Class Honours and straight off the course, making characters in 3D that are expressive rather than merely accurate.
What You'd Actually Be Doing
Real work on what we're actually making, credited to you by name. We're building Out of Water, a two-player split-screen collectathon platformer, and we take on co-development for other studios: concept art, stylised and hard surface 3D, level design and gameplay programming. Interns work on both, in the same project as everyone else, in the same reviews.
The flip side of a studio this size is worth saying out loud. There is no separate intern track, no rotation programme, and no mentor whose only job is you. You get handed real tasks early because there is nobody else to hand them to. Some people thrive on that and some would much rather have the structure of a two-hundred-person studio, and both of those are reasonable.
Applying
Don't send us a CV through this website. Not because we're precious about it, but because the university runs the shortlist for the intern intake: a CV sent straight to us sits outside the process it needs to be inside. Apply through Student Futures when a Shiverbug role is listed and it lands in the right pile.
Not a Teesside Student?
Then there's no scheme to point you at, but we'd still rather hear from you than not. Use the contact form, pick Freelance, internships and joining us, and send a link to your portfolio or reel rather than an attachment.
One thing worth knowing before you spend an evening on it: we're a small studio, and we aren't always in a position to take anyone on, whatever the quality of the work. A speculative message here is a hello and a bookmark, not an application to a vacancy. We'd rather you knew that going in.