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Engineering Lead
Second Unit Games | Remote - U.S.
Second Unit is looking for an experienced Engineering Lead for client game projects.
This is a hands-on role. You'll lead engineers, but you'll also write code. We're looking for someone who is comfortable making technical decisions, mentoring engineers, reviewing code, troubleshooting builds or Perforce problems. and jumping in to implement a feature when that's what the project needs.
If you're a senior engineer who enjoys leading people but doesn't want to spend all day in meetings, this may be a good fit.
What You'll Do
Our project teams will typically be small, cross-discipline groups of approximately 6-15 developers, depending on the scope of the engagement. You'll lead the engineers assigned to the project while continuing to contribute directly. That includes making day-to-day technical decisions, reviewing code, estimating and planning work, assigning tasks, identifying risks early, and solving technical problems for both the project and team's development environment.
The actual work will vary by project. You might be writing gameplay code, building systems or tools, working in a proprietary engine, reviewing someone else's implementation, or tracking down why yesterday's build suddenly stopped working.
You'll mentor both senior and junior engineers and help onboard new team members. We expect our leads to set the standard for how the team works, communicates, and solves problems.
You'll Help Us Win the Work, Too
Our leads are involved before a project starts, not just after the work has been signed.
You'll participate in client discovery and planning meetings to understand the game, the technology, and what the client needs from us. You'll help evaluate scope, identify technical risks, estimate the engineering work, and determine what kind of team we need.
You will be an integral part of our initial client conversations. We believe that our clients should meet the people who will actually be responsible for the work. You should be comfortable talking with a client's engineers and studio leadership, asking detailed questions, discussing technical tradeoffs, and explaining how our team will work with theirs.
What We're Looking For
There are two experience requirements for this position that are important to us: you've helped ship a major game, and you've worked on a game after it shipped.
You must have:
• Personally contributed to the development and launch of at least one AA or AAA game
• Have experience supporting a released game and delivering live or post-launch content
• Strong hands-on game engineering experience and the ability to write production-quality code
• Experience leading and mentoring other engineers, both junior and senior
• Experience diagnosing difficult technical and production problems
• A solid understanding of game-development pipelines, source control, build systems, and development workflows
• The ability to estimate engineering work, identify risks, and communicate technical issues clearly
• The judgment and communication skills to work directly with client engineers, discipline leads, and studio leadership
You do not need to have "Lead" in your title. If you're a senior engineer who has been taking on technical leadership, helping other engineers, and owning difficult problems, we're interested in talking to you.
Professional experience with Unreal Engine, Unity, Perforce, Git, PC/console development, proprietary engines, or cross-platform development is useful. We're less concerned with checking every technology box than we are with finding someone who understands how games actually get built and shipped.
What We Want to See From You
When you apply, we'd like to see more than a list of studios and job titles. Help us understand what you actually did.
In the application process we'll include a place for you to tell us which games you've shipped, what you were responsible for, and what you personally contributed. If you've supported a game after launch, tell us about the features, DLC, live content, or other post-launch work you helped deliver.
We'd also like to understand where you've led. That doesn't require having "Lead" on your résumé. Tell us about a team you helped lead, a difficult technical problem you owned, or a situation where other engineers looked to you for direction.
We care much more about what you actually did than what your title was.
What This Role Isn't
This isn't an Engineering Director job where you manage engineers but rarely touch the game.
It also isn't the CTO position. Company-wide technology strategy, security, corporate IT, and engineering policy are handled elsewhere. You'll work with our CTO when a project runs into architectural, infrastructure, security, or other technical issues that need their involvement.
Your job is to make sure the engineering work on your project gets done well. You'll lead the work, and you'll do the work.
About Second Unit
Keep your next game moving. Keep your current game thriving.
Second Unit works with established game studios that need to keep supporting successful games while their internal teams move on to what's next.
Our U.S.-based teams work directly inside our clients' development pipelines and take responsibility for defined pieces of their roadmap, including DLC, live content, gameplay features, systems, and other player-facing work.
Our teams are led by experienced developers who are still actively involved in making the game.
How We Work
Second Unit is a remote-first U.S. studio.
Our primary employment model is W-2 hourly.
You'll be paid for every hour you work, including approved overtime when applicable. Because our work depends on client projects, there may be periods between assignments when hours are not available. We want to be clear about that from the beginning.
While assigned to client work, eligible employees receive monthly healthcare and hardware stipends.
You'll use your own development workstation, provided it meets Second Unit's hardware and security requirements. We provide the dedicated project environment and security configuration used for company work. Individual clients may require additional security measures or virtual development environments.
The Person We're Looking For
You still like solving technical problems. You like helping other engineers get better. You raise problems early. If you don't know the answer, you're comfortable saying so and then figuring it out. When the team hits a difficult problem, you're more likely to get involved than stand back and manage it from a distance. And after years in game development, you still like shipping games.
If that sounds familiar, we'd like to hear what you've built, what you've shipped, and what you worked on after launch.