SNCF's Défi Ingénieurs: the engineer recruitment challenge game
Défi Ingénieurs, or The Engineer Challenge, is a recruitment game from the French railway group SNCF and the agencies TBWA Paris and DAN Paris. It ran in three editions aimed at engineering students; the address used for it no longer loads.
Updated
What Défi Ingénieurs is
SNCF, the French National Railway Group, recruits more than a thousand engineers and managers a year, according to figures given in 2017 alongside a workforce of 260,000 people in 120 countries. To show students what engineering work at the railway looks like, it launched Défi Ingénieurs, a recruitment game also called The Engineer Challenge.
The first edition was a role-playing game with four challenges conceived by SNCF engineers. Players met situations from the job: building a viaduct, running trains on the same track, working around physical limits of the infrastructure, and managing operations in a snow storm. The aim was to present the range of engineering jobs at the group.
After that edition's reception, SNCF and TBWA Paris made a second round in 2014. It was built to be hard enough that only the best students would finish: ten challenges, entirely in 3D with a low-poly look, playable on mobile and tablet as well as desktop. Players had to solve demanding mathematical and scientific problems, from developing a train prototype and using big data to control fraud to building a complex subway system and breaking a world speed record. The game was synced with LinkedIn and awarded bonus points for completing a profile.
The later editions and their reported results
| Measure | Second edition (2014) | Third edition (2016) |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering schools taking part | 150 | 180 |
| Students who tried the game | 5,000 | 11,192 |
| Reached the last challenge | Not reported | 259 (2.3%) |
| Finished the game | 17 (0.34%) | 6 (0.05%) |
| Outcome reported | 10 hired after interviews; résumés up 37,500% on the same period of 2013 | The 6 finishers work in SNCF's innovation and R&D department |
Figures as reported by SNCF and its agencies for each edition; the 2016 game could only be finished by hacking the site.
The third edition: a game you could only win by hacking
For the third edition in 2016, SNCF worked with TBWA Paris and DAN Paris. The Impossible Game was an online platform built in HTML5 Canvas, with an illustrated futuristic look, played from a desktop keyboard or with a smartphone as controller. Its theme was the transport of tomorrow, with five challenges: programming the artificial intelligence of a robot, setting up the energy transition for a smart grid, and rethinking the space, design and ergonomics of the TGV. The last challenge could only be solved by hacking the website and reprogramming its code. That edition was dedicated to the transport of tomorrow, with ecology, logistics, economics and technology at its center, and it placed players in a futuristic world of robots, big data and 3D printing.
What is true today
The game's website, which press coverage of the early editions gave as defi-ingenieurs-sncf.com, no longer loads in November 2026, with or without www. The old SNCF group address from the original coverage, sncf.com/fr/groupe, now forwards to groupe-sncf.com.
Défi Ingénieurs is listed in the directory as unconfirmed. For similar career-oriented titles see the career exploration games hub.
Questions about Défi Ingénieurs
What was Défi Ingénieurs?
It was SNCF's recruitment game for engineering students and graduates, built with the agencies TBWA Paris and, for the third edition, DAN Paris. Players solved engineering challenges to show their skills.
Can Défi Ingénieurs still be played?
Its website no longer loads as of November 2026, and the game is listed as unconfirmed.
How many students finished the hardest editions?
Of 5,000 students who tried the 2014 edition, 17 finished. In 2016, 11,192 tried the game, 259 reached the last challenge and 6 cracked it.