Principal 'Game Feel' Engineer — Unity (Game Programmer / SW Eng San Francisco , California Direct Hire Mar 17, 2026)
Can You Make a Button Press Feel Like a Tiny Celebration?
Our client has built an AI companion with millions of daily users, $20M ARR, and a $115M Series A already in the bank. There's one thing standing between them and extraordinary: the moment‑to‑moment feel of being inside its world isn't there yet. They know it.
That's the job. Fix All of It. Own All of It. Ship Constantly.
WHAT YOU'LL OWN
- The complete feel layer: character interactions, world navigation, camera behavior, environmental objects, VFX, micro‑animations, and haptics.
- Rapid prototyping — slam out variants, put them physically in founders' hands, iterate fast.
- The internal standard for what "good" feels like, YOU are the bar‑setter.
- Tuning systems you design and build yourself, no designers in the way, no approvals needed.
WHO THIS IS FOR
- Someone who can hear "this feels floaty" and close the gap to "I could do this all day", through taste, iteration, and restraint.
- A designer who pushes code: you build your own tuning knobs, tie into existing systems, and need no babysitting.
- Fluent in Unity or Unreal (Unity preferred); solid enough C# to implement and tune without a systems engineer holding your hand.
- A personal library of feel references, games you've played, dissected, and learned from.
- Energized by tight feedback loops, early prototypes, and direct founder input.
- Someone who prefers autonomy over process and measures success by what ships, not when.