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

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. 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. 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.

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 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; 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 4–5 years minimum experience in games engineering, including 2+ years at senior or lead level on a shipped commercial title 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; Shipped a game in the AA or narrative indie space 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 Competitive salary plus meaningful founding-team equity, with step-ups at funding milestones.

Equity: 4-year vesting, 1-year cliff Remote-first; 3 weeks paid vacation minimum; 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 Slice production foundations operational by day 30: source control, build pipeline, review flow Vertical slice shipped by day 90, secure through every publisher demo Playtest builds shipping on a reliable cadence from day 90 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 Performance targets defined for PC and console platforms A new engineer can onboard from your docs and ship in their first week

📌 LeadDeveloper → 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 (Montreal)
🏢 Oina Studio
📍 Montreal