Lead Game Programmer Jobs in Texas (NOW HIRING)

Job Title: Senior Gameplay Engineer (Contract, 3-6 months)
Location: Remote, work from home in the US or UK only
Position Type: Full-time (40 hours)

Uplift Games is the studio behind Adopt Me, the premiere pet adoption game on Roblox (43B+ sessions, 1.94 million record CCU). We’re looking for a talented and driven Senior Gameplay Engineer to join our studio. As a senior member of our engineering team, you will engineer and lead complex projects, help define engineering standards, and mentor others.

At Uplift Games, Gameplay Engineers are at the heart of our mission to “Create Future Nostalgia” - not just as technical experts, but also as creatives. Your ideas matter here. As you transform features from rough ideas into polished products, you will apply your critical design eye and excellent UX intuition. As the central integrator for the work of your cross-disciplinary peers, you are the owner of key initiatives, engaging with all aspects of game development.

This is an opportunity to create an outsized impact on many millions of players while operating in a small studio where every person plays a major role. It’s important that you take pride in your work, love to learn new things, and are naturally driven to deliver the best-in-class experiences.

You value diversity and want to work alongside talented people from marginalized groups. We are explicitly a trans, LGBTQ+, BIPOC / BAME and disability positive team.

This is a remote position open to candidates who are based in the US or UK and can demonstrate eligibility to work in those countries.

• Write excellent Lua/Luau code for gameplay features, UI, VFX, and content updates. Reduce technical debt and define best practices.
• Own product features end-to-end: concept, implementation, polish, testing, and deployment to millions of players.
• Design server-authoritative systems that are resilient to client exploitation. Think about security and validation instinctively.
• Debug and optimize systems running across thousands of concurrent servers.
• Craft gameplay that feels great. Responsive controls, polished and effective feedback, intuitive UX. As a senior gameplay engineer your ability to deliver a satisfying player experience is crucial.
• Be a creative generalist. You'll work across code, particles, asset integration, UI layout, camera work, and more. We value breadth. Being excited about learning and working with new systems is excellent. Specializing in one or two deep areas is an added bonus.
• Collaborate with your cross-disciplinary peers (artists, QA testers, producers, game designers). Communicate clearly and empathetically both synchronously and asynchronously.
• Participate in the design process. Brainstorm, pitch ideas, and help shape what we build. Engineers here have a real voice in game design.
• Support and coordinate with your fellow engineers. Give and receive thoughtful code reviews, contribute to architectural decisions, and help the team ship with confidence.
• Mentor and help our more junior engineers level up. Share knowledge, give constructive feedback, and lead by example.
• Work with producers to scope complex initiatives, assess risk, set goals, and ensure timely delivery.
• Review your own work critically before marking it complete. Thoroughly test throughout development and take pride in shipping with minimal bugs.

These are the things candidates really should have but can make up for in other areas. If you're missing one or two, consider applying anyway, especially if you belong to a marginalized group.

• 5+ years of professional game development experience.
• Roblox/Luau experience, or traditional game development experience with hands-on work in areas like character controllers, camera systems, creature behavior, motion/animation, or VFX.
• Shipped a complete title or shipped key features in a live service game.
• A portfolio or shipped work that demonstrates your game feel and creative skills. We want to see what you've built. Please highlight your specific contributions.
• Creativity and a good eye for design. You notice when something doesn't feel right and you fix it.
• Comfortable working across disciplines. You're happy jumping from code to particles to UI layout.
• Strong personal drive. Self-guided with excellent communication and transparency.
• Experience with performance profiling, optimization, or debugging complex systems in a live environment.
• Strong problem solving, organization, and prioritization skills.
• Great written and verbal communication in English.
• Passion for playing and making games.
• You value diversity and want to work alongside talented people from marginalized groups. We are explicitly a trans, LGBTQ+, BIPOC / BAME and disability positive team.

These are things that can improve your candidacy, but none of these are necessary to apply.

• A game or experience you designed and built yourself (indie game, Roblox experience, game jam entry, etc).
• Extra bonus if you have released and maintained a Roblox experience.
• Understanding of the Roblox community and Roblox player motivations.
• Experience working in self-managed roles and remote teams.
• Experience mentoring engineers or leading technical projects across a team.
• Familiarity with live ops: feature flags, A/B testing, data-driven iteration, or managing content on a weekly cadence.
• Experience with REST APIs and modern UI frameworks in Roblox (e.g. React-Lua).

When possible, we provide transparent estimated salary ranges to set expectations early and to respect your time.

We recognize, however, that salaries vary within our various remote geographical locations. To give an indication of the salary level for this role, we estimate the annual salary will be as follows for these example locations:

Our compensation package is intended to be competitive with your local market and is negotiable.

In addition to salary, you will receive a signing bonus, along with a generously sized cash bonus package (4-year vested RSU-style cash bonus). You'll also be eligible for our studio-wide annual bonus scheme.

We also offer a competitive benefits package for our employees.

A few reminders: you must be over 18 to apply. Though this is a remote role, you must reside in and have permission to work in either the US or UK to apply.