How to Apply to Nexon

9 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 23 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Nexon is a federation, not a single company. Choose the entity (Japan, Korea, NeoPle, Embark, regional studios) before you choose the role.
  • Each entity runs its own ATS: recruit.nexon.co.jp for Japan, recruit.nexon.com for Korea, Teamtailor for Embark Studios. Apply via the entity-specific portal.
  • Compensation in the Korean entities is famously above the local game-industry median, but expectations on execution discipline and live-service availability are correspondingly high.
  • Embark Studios operates with notably more creative latitude and a flatter culture than the Korean MMO core; expect a different interview style and a different bar for 'fit'.
  • Live-service experience, franchise stewardship, and at-scale technology beat unshipped prototypes and generalist resumes at every entity.
  • Language reality matters: Korean for Pangyo and Jeju, Japanese for Tokyo domestic roles, fluent English for Embark and global publishing. Overstating it is the most common late-stage rejection cause.
  • CEO Junghun Lee took over from Owen Mahoney in April 2024; recent record results have been driven primarily by DnF Mobile in China and Blue Archive, both Korean-developed properties.

About Nexon

Nexon Co Ltd (TYO:3659) is one of the world's largest free-to-play online game publishers, with roughly 12,000 employees across the Group and a portfolio that has generated billions of dollars in lifetime revenue. The company was founded in Seoul in 1994 by Jung-Ju Kim and is widely credited with pioneering the modern free-to-play, item-monetized online game model with titles such as 'Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds' and, later, 'MapleStory'. In 2011 the corporate parent relocated its headquarters and listing to Tokyo, where it now trades on the Prime market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while operational and creative weight remains heavily concentrated in Korea. The Group runs as a federation of regionally distinct studios and operating companies. Nexon Japan in Tokyo is the listing entity, finance and investor-relations base, and the home of global publishing for Western-facing titles. Nexon Korea Corp (Pangyo) and its parent NXC are operationally the largest part of the business and run the live-service backbone of MapleStory, KartRider, FIFA Online, Sudden Attack, and many of the Group's biggest Korean PC and mobile titles. NeoPle, based on Jeju Island, develops Dungeon and Fighter (DnF), whose Chinese version is co-operated with Tencent under a long-running royalty arrangement; the 2024 launch of DnF Mobile in China contributed to record-breaking results that year. Embark Studios in Stockholm, acquired by Nexon, is the studio behind 'THE FINALS' and 'ARC Raiders' and operates with a notably flatter, more Western-creative culture than the Korean MMO core. Other notable Group properties include Blue Archive (developed in Korea, published globally by Yostar) and a network of smaller studios in the U.S., Vancouver and Asia. For candidates, Nexon's most important characteristic is that it is not a single company so much as a holding structure: the team you join, the city you work in and the title you support determine almost everything about your day-to-day life. Korean entities tend to follow the disciplined, hierarchical conventions of the larger Korean game industry but are also famously among the highest payers in that market. Japanese roles in Tokyo are bilingual-friendly at the global publishing layer but Japanese-primary in domestic publishing and corporate functions. Embark in Stockholm hires globally in English, with a strong emphasis on creative ownership. Across all of these, the through-line is a company that takes live-service operations, long-tail franchise stewardship, and platform-scale technology extremely seriously.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Decide which legal entity you actually want to join

    Decide which legal entity you actually want to join. Nexon Japan (Tokyo, recruit.nexon.co.jp) handles global publishing, corporate, and Japan-domestic roles. Nexon Korea / NeoPle (Pangyo / Jeju, recruit.nexon.com and career.nexon.com) covers the bulk of game development, live ops, and the largest IPs. Embark Studios (Stockholm, careers.embark-studios.com) hires for THE FINALS and ARC Raiders. Each portal is operated independently and the application processes do not share data.

  2. 2
    For Nexon Japan, register on recruit

    For Nexon Japan, register on recruit.nexon.co.jp, complete the Japanese-language profile (name in kanji and kana, photo, employment history, language certifications such as JLPT and TOEIC) and apply per posting. New-graduate (新卒) and mid-career (中途) tracks are separate; senior global publishing roles often have a parallel English path coordinated by the recruiter.

  3. 3
    For Nexon Korea, apply via recruit

    For Nexon Korea, apply via recruit.nexon.com (and the NeoPle subsite for Dungeon and Fighter roles). Korean resumes typically follow the standard 자기소개서 (self-introduction essay) format alongside a CV; portfolios are mandatory for art, design and game design roles. Expect to be asked to authorize a personal-information consent form before submission.

  4. 4
    For Embark Studios, apply through careers

    For Embark Studios, apply through careers.embark-studios.com, which is powered by Teamtailor. Submit an English CV plus a short cover note, a portfolio or shipped-titles list, and any links (ArtStation, GitHub, video reels) directly in the Teamtailor profile. Embark posts location flexibility and visa-sponsorship information per role.

  5. 5
    First-stage screening is almost always done by an in-house recruiter rather than

    First-stage screening is almost always done by an in-house recruiter rather than an agency. Expect a 30 to 45 minute call covering your motivation for that specific studio (not 'Nexon' generically), your experience with the relevant genre, and visa or relocation logistics where applicable.

  6. 6
    Technical and craft assessments vary by track: game engineers usually receive a

    Technical and craft assessments vary by track: game engineers usually receive a take-home or live coding round in C++ or C#; backend and platform engineers are tested on distributed systems, scalability and live-ops design; artists and designers are evaluated on portfolio review plus a paid or unpaid art test; data and analytics roles get a SQL plus product-sense exercise.

  7. 7
    Onsite (or video-onsite) loops typically run three to five rounds and include th

    Onsite (or video-onsite) loops typically run three to five rounds and include the hiring manager, peers from the team, a cross-functional partner (producer, PM or art director), and a senior leader. For Korean roles, expect at least one round in Korean even if other rounds are in English. For Embark, all interviews are in English.

  8. 8
    Final stages include compensation discussion (Korean entities pay notably above

    Final stages include compensation discussion (Korean entities pay notably above the local game-industry median; Japanese roles include the standard two-bonus-per-year structure; Embark uses Stockholm market bands with equity), a reference check, and for relocations a separate immigration and onboarding workstream. Offer-to-start times are typically four to eight weeks domestically and two to four months for international moves.

Resume Tips for Nexon

recommended

Tailor the resume to the specific entity and franchise, not to 'Nexon' as a bran

Tailor the resume to the specific entity and franchise, not to 'Nexon' as a brand. A MapleStory live-ops engineer role and an ARC Raiders gameplay programmer role share almost no evaluative criteria; calling out the specific title, platform and live-service context shows you have actually done your homework on the Group's structure.

recommended

Lead with shipped, live titles and quantified live-service impact

Lead with shipped, live titles and quantified live-service impact. Nexon's revenue base is overwhelmingly long-tail live games, so MAU, DAU, retention deltas, ARPPU lifts, build-cadence, and incident-response metrics carry far more weight than a long list of unshipped prototypes.

recommended

For Korean and Japanese applications, follow local resume conventions strictly

For Korean and Japanese applications, follow local resume conventions strictly. Korean roles expect a 자기소개서 essay alongside the CV; Japanese roles often require a 履歴書 (rirekisho) and 職務経歴書 (shokumu-keirekisho), typically with a photo, in the prescribed format. Submitting a Western one-page resume to a domestic role reads as either careless or culturally unaware.

recommended

For Embark and other English-language postings, a clean two-page CV with a clear

For Embark and other English-language postings, a clean two-page CV with a clearly linked portfolio (ArtStation, Vimeo, GitHub, personal site) is the norm. Embark in particular weights demonstrable craft over pedigree, so links should open to actual artifacts, not to a landing page that requires a click-through.

recommended

Call out genre fluency explicitly

Call out genre fluency explicitly. Experience in MMORPGs, kart racers, sports sims, shooters, or social-shooter live games maps directly to specific Group studios; do not assume a recruiter will infer that 'shipped a competitive shooter' is relevant to THE FINALS or ARC Raiders.

recommended

Highlight any work with the Group's actual technology surface area: large-scale

Highlight any work with the Group's actual technology surface area: large-scale C++ and C#, custom engines (Embark's internal tooling, NeoPle's DnF engine work), Unreal and Unity at scale, AWS and on-prem hybrid live-ops infrastructure, anti-cheat, payments and live events. Vague 'full-stack' framing rarely lands for game-industry hiring panels.

recommended

Show language capability honestly with certifications and concrete project examp

Show language capability honestly with certifications and concrete project examples. JLPT N2 or N1 is effectively required for Japan-domestic roles, business-level Korean for most Pangyo and Jeju roles, and clear written and spoken English for Embark and global publishing. Overstating language ability is the most common cause of late-stage rejection.

recommended

Address relocation, work authorization and remote-work expectations up front in

Address relocation, work authorization and remote-work expectations up front in a one-line summary or in the cover note. Korean and Japanese entities sponsor visas for senior and specialized roles but the process adds weeks; Embark's published location and visa stance per role should be matched, not negotiated against, in the first message.

ATS System: Multiple regional ATS (no Group-wide system)

Nexon does not use a single Group-wide applicant tracking system. Nexon Japan operates a custom Japanese-language portal at recruit.nexon.co.jp. Nexon Korea uses its own Korean-language careers portal at recruit.nexon.com (with career.nexon.com as a related domain), and the NeoPle subsidiary on Jeju maintains a separate hiring page for Dungeon and Fighter roles. Embark Studios in Stockholm uses Teamtailor at careers.embark-studios.com. Other Group studios in North America and Asia generally maintain their own portals or partner with local recruitment platforms. Application data and candidate history are not shared across these systems.

  • Apply through the entity-specific portal, not through a generic 'careers at Nexon' search. Submitting the same resume to both the Japan and Korea portals is fine and does not create a duplicate-application issue because the systems are independent.
  • On the Japan portal, complete the Japanese profile fields even if you also upload an English CV; many corporate recruiters filter on the structured fields rather than parsed PDFs.
  • On the Korea portal, expect to authorize personal-information consent forms before submission; without that consent your application cannot be processed. Portfolio links should be self-hosted or on an internationally accessible service since some Western platforms have intermittent reachability from Korean networks.
  • On Embark's Teamtailor, fill in the structured fields and the work-history section even if you attach a CV. Teamtailor's keyword and location filters are commonly used by recruiters and rely on the structured data, not the attachment.
  • Use a stable, monitored email address. Notification cadence varies sharply by entity, with Embark typically the fastest, Nexon Japan the most formal, and Nexon Korea the most variable depending on hiring volume.
  • Where the same candidate is being considered by multiple Group entities (rare but possible for senior roles), let the recruiter know explicitly; the entities do not deconflict automatically.

Interview Culture

Interview culture varies significantly across the Group, and assuming 'Nexon culture' is monolithic is the most common mistake candidates make.

In Pangyo and Jeju, expect a structured, hierarchical loop: technical or craft assessment, peer panel, hiring manager, and a senior leader who often probes long-term motivation and stability. Korean interviewers value preparation, deference to seniority signaled in form (not in deference of opinion), and concrete evidence of resilience under demanding live-service conditions. At least one round will be in Korean for most roles, even where English is workable elsewhere in the loop. In Tokyo, the cadence is more formal and document-driven; expect questions about your career arc and reasons for joining (志望動機) to be weighed as heavily as technical depth, and expect quiet listening followed by careful, written follow-up rather than rapid-fire debate. At Embark in Stockholm, the loop is markedly flatter and more Western: paired interviews with future colleagues, an emphasis on craft demos and design judgment over abstract problem-solving, and explicit signaling that disagreement with the interviewer is welcome. Across all three, two themes are consistent: deep curiosity about live-service operations and player behavior, and skepticism toward candidates who pitch themselves as generalists rather than as specialists in a specific genre, system or craft.

What Nexon Looks For

  • Demonstrated craft in a specific genre or discipline that maps to a current Group title, rather than generalist enthusiasm for 'gaming'.
  • Live-service maturity: comfort with on-call, incident response, seasonal release cadences, A/B testing in production, and the operational ethics of free-to-play monetization.
  • Long-arc franchise thinking. The biggest Group properties are decades old; candidates who can describe how to evolve a live IP without breaking the existing player contract are highly valued.
  • Technical depth at scale, especially for engineering and platform roles: large C++ or C# codebases, custom engine work, distributed backends, anti-cheat, payments at international scale, and resilient live-ops infrastructure.
  • Cultural literacy for the specific studio. Korean entities reward disciplined execution and preparation; Japanese roles reward formality, written precision, and consensus-orientation; Embark rewards initiative, candor, and visible creative ownership.
  • Honest language proficiency at the level the role actually requires. The Group will hire English-only candidates into specific roles, but only where the team can actually function in English; misrepresenting language ability is a common late-stage disqualifier.
  • Visible portfolios, shipped titles, or production code. The Group is skeptical of pure pedigree; even very senior candidates are expected to show artifacts.
  • Commitment to player-facing quality over internal politics. Hiring panels frequently ask about a moment when the candidate pushed back to protect the player experience, and weak or theoretical answers tend to disqualify.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do I actually apply to Nexon?
It depends on which Group entity you want to join. Nexon Japan: recruit.nexon.co.jp. Nexon Korea: recruit.nexon.com (with career.nexon.com as a related portal). NeoPle (Dungeon and Fighter, Jeju): a dedicated subsite under the Korean portal. Embark Studios (Stockholm): careers.embark-studios.com, powered by Teamtailor. There is no single Group-wide careers site that covers all of these.
Is Nexon a Japanese or Korean company?
Both, in different senses. The listed parent Nexon Co Ltd is headquartered in Tokyo and trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TYO:3659). Operationally and creatively, however, the Group's largest weight remains in Korea via Nexon Korea Corp in Pangyo and NeoPle on Jeju. The 2011 relocation of the corporate parent to Japan was primarily a listing and global-expansion move; it did not move the bulk of the studios.
Do I need to speak Japanese or Korean to work at Nexon?
For most Tokyo-domestic roles you need business-level Japanese (typically JLPT N2 or N1). For most Pangyo and Jeju roles you need business-level Korean. Global publishing roles in Tokyo, senior technical roles in Korea, and almost all roles at Embark Studios in Stockholm operate in English. Misrepresenting language ability is one of the most common reasons offers fall through late in the process.
Who runs Nexon now?
Junghun Lee became CEO of Nexon Co Ltd in April 2024, succeeding Owen Mahoney, who had led the company for the prior decade. The leadership change has coincided with record-breaking financial results driven primarily by Dungeon and Fighter Mobile in China and Blue Archive globally.
What ATS does each part of the Group use?
Nexon Japan uses a custom Japanese-language portal (recruit.nexon.co.jp). Nexon Korea uses its own Korean-language portal (recruit.nexon.com). Embark Studios uses Teamtailor (careers.embark-studios.com). Other Group studios maintain their own portals. There is no shared Group-wide ATS, and applying to one does not register you with the others.
Is Embark Studios really part of Nexon?
Yes. Embark Studios in Stockholm is a Nexon Group subsidiary and is the developer behind 'THE FINALS' and 'ARC Raiders'. It operates with a notably flatter and more Western-creative culture than the Korean MMO core of the Group, and its hiring process, compensation philosophy and day-to-day work look much more like a European AAA studio than like Nexon Korea.
How is compensation at Nexon?
Nexon's Korean entities are widely regarded as among the highest payers in the Korean game industry, particularly at senior engineering, design and live-ops levels. Tokyo roles follow the standard Japanese pay structure, including the typical two-bonus-per-year cycle. Embark's compensation follows the Stockholm market with equity components. Specific numbers are role-dependent and are usually not disclosed until late in the process.
What kinds of roles are most often open?
The Group's hiring volume is heaviest in live-service game engineering (C++, C#, Unreal, Unity, distributed backends), live-ops production and design, art and tech art, data and analytics for live games, and global publishing functions (community, marketing, localization). Regional offices also hire for corporate functions: finance, legal, IR, HR and IT.
Does Nexon sponsor work visas?
Yes, for senior and specialized roles in Japan, Korea and at Embark in Sweden. The Group does not generally sponsor relocation for entry-level roles. Visa sponsorship adds several weeks to the offer-to-start window and should be flagged in your first conversation with the recruiter.
What should my interview preparation actually focus on?
Three things: deep familiarity with the specific franchise or product line you are interviewing for (not just 'Nexon games' generally); honest, evidenced answers about live-service operations under pressure; and a clear point of view on where that franchise should go next. Generic enthusiasm for gaming and abstract puzzle problem-solving consistently underperform compared to specific, artifact-backed answers.

Open Positions

Nexon currently has 23 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 23 open positions at Nexon

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Sources

  1. Nexon Co Ltd corporate site (Japan, parent entity) —
  2. Nexon Japan recruit portal —
  3. Nexon Korea recruit portal —
  4. Embark Studios careers (Teamtailor) —
  5. Nexon Co Ltd investor relations —
  6. Nexon Co Ltd on Tokyo Stock Exchange (TYO:3659) —
  7. Embark Studios company site (THE FINALS, ARC Raiders) —
  8. NeoPle (Dungeon and Fighter developer, Jeju) —