My advice: hire a sharp game programmer, specifically one who has worked on tools and has 1-5 years in the game industry. The pay is not that great for game programmers in that range of experience, so they can handle a startup salary. And they are typically enthusiastic and experienced in the right areas you want.
Many such programmers are burned out or just laid off, so they will consider working outside of games, but you have to bait them a little so they know you're not a corporate dullard. I would suggest a job listing with some game-programmer keywords or even sneaking onto CreativeHeads or Gamasutra.
I say this not in an exploitative mode, but because that was my profile when I jumped from games into a job as a 2000-era dot-com client software programmer. They specifically mentioned that they were looking for console programming experience because there were several former game programmers there who understood this dynamic. And I was quite happy with the time I spent there.
Many such programmers are burned out or just laid off, so they will consider working outside of games, but you have to bait them a little so they know you're not a corporate dullard. I would suggest a job listing with some game-programmer keywords or even sneaking onto CreativeHeads or Gamasutra.
I say this not in an exploitative mode, but because that was my profile when I jumped from games into a job as a 2000-era dot-com client software programmer. They specifically mentioned that they were looking for console programming experience because there were several former game programmers there who understood this dynamic. And I was quite happy with the time I spent there.