Lead UE5 Developer

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.

Games are a $190B+ global industry, larger than film and music combined, and story-driven games are one of its fastest-growing segments. Small teams can now compete with the majors when craft and specificity align. Our debut enters that segment from a world no game has offered.

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 in November 2026. 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 in 2027/2028
• Fluency in 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 Montreal-adjacent hours (ET)
• 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 October 1: source control, build pipeline, review flow
• Vertical slice shipped November 14, stable through every publisher demo
• Playtest builds shipping on a reliable cadence from mid-November

6 months

• Slice systems hardened into production-ready foundations
• Next Fest demo build shipped and stable (late February)
• 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

1. Intro call with the founder
2. Take-home assignment
3. Final interview
4. Offer