Freelance Unity Game Developer Jobs in Berkeley, CA

The opportunity
The team behind Unity's visionOS support, Play-to-Device, and Record & Playback is growing as we prepare for something even more ambitious: adapting PolySpatial to stream Unity content into other game engines and 3D environments - in-process, cross-process, and over the network.
We're looking for engineers eager to help us invent how different real-time 3D runtimes communicate and render under real-world constraints. You'll work at the intersection of graphics, core game engine tech, high-performance networking, distributed systems, and emerging AI/ML-assisted workflows. This is your opportunity to build the fundamental infrastructure for the next generation of interconnected games and intelligent 3D ecosystems.
You'll bridge Unity content into other renderers, maintaining fidelity and performance within a renderer we don't own. This requires a rare mix of artistic instincts, low-level API knowledge, and the systems engineering skills to build a robust pipeline. If you prefer solving hard rendering problems at the systems level-shader translation, resource lifetime, visual equivalence-more than chasing one-off visual features, you'll find this work deeply satisfying.
What you'll be doing

• Map Unity graphics and rendering features onto third-party renderers while preserving visual consistency and performance.
• Develop compact scene-state representations and compression strategies for meshes, materials, textures, animations, transforms, deltas, and dependency graphs across local and networked execution
• Engineer robust graphical systems that remain stable and resource-efficient even when scaled to massive user-generated content libraries
• Profile and optimize end-to-end rendering for high framerates and fidelity while minimizing overhead and sync stalls

What we're looking for

• Multi-Engine Fluency: Significant experience with Unity's rendering architecture, and at least one other high-end renderer (Unreal, Frostbite, etc).
• Shader & API Depth: Strong understanding of shader languages (HLSL/GLSL/Metal) and graphics APIs (DirectX, Vulkan, Metal), and the ability to translate between them.
• Pipeline Mindset: You understand the full asset lifecycle-from authoring through import, batching, streaming, and rendering-including shader compilation, mesh processing, and texture streaming.
• Systems-First Engineer: You prioritize building stable, scalable, maintainable systems over chasing the latest graphics techniques.

You might also have

• Experience writing shader cross-compilers, AST manipulators, or shader graph backends.
• Background in networked graphics APIs, pixel-based streaming, cloud rendering, or virtualized GPUs.
• Experience building deterministic record/replay systems for rendering, simulation, networking, testing, or debugging.
• Familiarity with MCPs, agentic tool frameworks, AI-assisted content pipelines, synthetic data generation, ML-based asset optimization, or automated scene analysis.

Additional information

• Relocation support is not available for this position
• Work visa/immigration sponsorship is not available for this position

$130,400.00 - $195,600.00
This range reflects the anticipated base salary for this position. Beyond base salary, this role may be eligible for equity awards and participation in our company incentive plans (such as annual discretionary bonuses or sales commissions). The final offer amount will depend on several factors, including geographic location and the candidate's relevant experience, professional background, and skill set.
Benefits
At Unity, we want our team members to thrive. We offer a wide range of benefits designed to support well-being and work-life balance.
Please note: Benefits eligibility, specific offerings, and coverage vary based on the country and employment status.
While specific benefits vary, here are some of the ways we strive to take care of our eligible team members globally: Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance | Commute subsidy | Employee stock ownership | Competitive retirement/pension plans | Generous vacation and personal days | Support for new parents through leave and family-care programs | Office food snacks | Mental Health and Wellbeing programs and support | Employee Resource Groups | Global Employee Assistance Program | Training and development programs | Volunteering and donation matching program
Life at Unity
Unity [NYSE: U] is the world's leading game engine, powering play for more than 3 billion consumers each month. The top mobile games in the world, the most played PC indie titles, the most innovative console games, and virtually all of the top XR and Web Games are developed, deployed, and grown in Unity. Unity also enables teams across industries like automotive, manufacturing, and healthcare to design, simulate, and collaborate in 3D - closing the gap between ideas and reality. For more information, please visit www.unity.com.
Unity is a proud equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment and celebrate our employees across age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law. Our differences are strengths that enable us to support the growing and evolving needs of our customers, partners, and collaborators. If you have a disability that means there are preparations or accommodations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please fill out this form to let us know.
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This position requires the incumbent to have a sufficient knowledge of English to have professional verbal and written exchanges in this language since the performance of the duties related to this position requires frequent and regular communication with colleagues and partners located worldwide and whose common language is English.
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