Lead UE5 Developer → Own the technical decisions and establish how this game gets built. Remote-first · Canada · As soon as possible Competitive salary plus meaningful founding-team equity

Own the technical decisions and establish how this game gets built.

Who We Are

Oina Studio is an independent Canadian game studio developing premium story-driven games for PC and console. We believe modern engines now let small teams deliver production value that once required hundreds of people.

We focus on single-player experiences: strong stories, characters worth caring about, and worlds that come alive the closer you look. Our first game is a narrative adventure of growth and companionship, drawn from Kazakh mythology. We build solid pipelines and keep the creativity and agility of a small team.

The Role

We are looking for a game developer to own technical decisions and establish strong development patterns for the studio.

Your first deliverable is the technical half of a vertical slice that publishers will judge at the end of your first 90 days. It will become the foundation of the full game we are building.

You will be the first technical hire and the architect of how this game gets built. This is a hands-on engineering role first — you'll write code for the majority of your time — and a leadership role second, as you help grow and shape the dev team through Prototyping and into production.

The work is narrative-driven: character systems, world traversal, atmospheric interactivity. You'll own the technical foundation of the game and collaborate directly with the founder on product decisions. As the studio grows, you'll lead the engineering team.

What You'll Own

Engineering (primary)

Architect and implement core gameplay systems in UE5

Build and own narrative systems: branching dialogue, quest flow, character state, progression

Establish the project's technical architecture from a greenfield state — pipelines, conventions, source control structure

Integrate content pipelines between art and engineering: character, environment, VFX, audio

Optimize for target platforms (PC primary, console for future audience expansion)

Write documentation for systems and onboarding future engineers

Technical leadership

Own the technical roadmap and scope estimates for each milestone

Own code review and quality standards — every line that enters the codebase meets your bar

Evaluate and select third-party tools, plugins, and middleware

Coordinate with Lead Artist on engine-side art pipeline and tool requirements

Flag technical risks early and propose solutions; be the person who knows what's actually hard

Who You Are

Independent and self-directed — comfortable being the sole developer at the start, able to scope and prioritize without hand-holding

A strong written communicator with an async-first mindset

Motivated by narrative games — dialogue, character, and story systems are the core work here, not an afterthought

Ready to own technical decisions and stand behind them across a multi-year build

What We Are Looking For

Required

4–5 years minimum experience in games engineering, including 2+ years at senior or lead level on a shipped commercial title

Deep UE5 proficiency at the code level

Experience building narrative or RPG systems (dialogue, quest graphs, character state)

Experience taking a project from greenfield — architecture, pipelines, and conventions you set up yourself. The studio inherits whatever foundations you lay; this is the capability the role exists for

Nice to have

Shipped a game in the AA or narrative indie space

Unity or other major engine experience (transferable skills)

Experience with Perforce or Git LFS on a large game project

Console porting experience welcome — we'll need it after the PC launch

Bilingual in English and French

What You'll Gain

Compensation

Competitive salary plus meaningful founding-team equity, with step-ups at funding milestones. We build the package around the right person and what they need to make this work

Equity: 4-year vesting, 1-year cliff

Benefits and culture

Remote-first; preference for candidates based in or willing to work Eastern Time (ET) hours

3 weeks paid vacation minimum; studio closes between Christmas and New Year

What this role gives you that bigger studios can't

First technical hire: you shape how the studio builds, rather than inheriting someone else's decisions

Your architecture is the studio's architecture — for this game and the ones after it

You own your domain, and the team commits to your decisions

What Success Looks Like

First 90 days

UE5 architecture and tooling decisions locked in your first two weeks

Slice production foundations operational by day 30: source control, build pipeline, review flow

Vertical slice shipped by day 90, stable through every publisher demo

Playtest builds shipping on a reliable cadence from day 90

6 months

Slice systems hardened into production-ready foundations

Next Fest demo build shipped and stable

Technical roadmap to first ship defined and defended in funding applications

Year one

Production schedule defended to publishers

Performance targets defined for PC and console platforms

A new engineer can onboard from your docs and ship in their first week

Our Process

Intro call with the founder

Take-home assignment

Final interview

Offer