Senior Software Engineer (Real-Time 3D Platform)

About UneeQ

UneeQ is an artificial intelligence company, developing the most advanced autonomous digital human platform available for customer interactions. Our mission is to deliver digital human experiences that reduce complexity, improve conversions and create memorable customer moments for brands.Working at the leading edge of technology, UneeQ is fast paced and constantly evolving. We are a remote-first workplace and have people located in New Zealand, the USA, Canada, Australia, and Portugal. We are deeply committed to living our values and fostering a culture and work practices where our people can do their best work, make an impact and thrive.

About the Role

This is a hands-on, high-impact role for a Senior Software Engineer who’s excited to build and evolve our core real-time 3D application (build on Unreal Engine) that powers UneeQ’s digital humans. While Unreal is at the heart of the role, it’s not game development only, you’ll also work across broader platform integrations and emerging technologies to help deliver high-quality, real-time digital human experiences.

We’re a remote-first company, so you’ll need to be comfortable working independently, owning outcomes, and collaborating asynchronously with a small, distributed team. If you’re based in Auckland (or New Zealand), there are opportunities to connect in person from time to time, including our co-working space and occasional meetups, but the role can also be based remotely (NZ or USA).

There’s plenty of room to make your mark. You’ll help improve performance, extend features, and integrate key systems around the Unreal application (including areas like streaming, machine learning and integrations with our other cloud based services). You’ll work closely with other senior engineers, and you’ll be trusted to bring a positive, adaptable mindset - someone who enjoys solving complex problems, learning new tools (including AI coding tools), and contributing to a culture of shared ownership and continuous improvement.

What you’ll be doing and key responsibilities:

Your week will balance focused engineering time with lightweight team collaboration. You’ll join stand-ups a couple of times a week to align with the team, unblock work, and share progress, along with a weekly planning session for the Unreal-based rendering application and occasional ad-hoc discussions when deeper collaboration is needed.

Most days, you’ll work hands-on in our Unreal Engine-based digital human application, contributing to features, performance, and overall system quality. As we’re not building a traditional game, the role also involves working across parts of the wider platform - integrating with services such as text-to-speech, real-time streaming (WebRTC), and cloud infrastructure (AWS). You’ll often own work end-to-end, with regular code reviews and design discussions to ensure a high technical standard.

You’ll work closely with senior engineers in the platform team, particularly your day-to-day counterpart, and collaborate as needed with adjacent technical teams that build on top of the platform. Your responsibilities will include:

Developing and enhancing features within our digital human application to improve quality and user engagement

Investigate and implement performance optimisation opportunities

Integrate other platform systems into the game engine

Research, experiment and implement (if appropriate) the latest techniques in graphics - such as machine learning based animation

Support other team members that use the game engine by debugging engine issues or providing expert support

Keep up to date with the latest developments in the industry and specific to our game engine

Provide thought leadership in real-time 3D related elements of our platform

Work with technical artists and animators to develop scalable pipelines for character creation

Support technical artists and animators do their best work by developing tools and systems to facilitate this

How We Measure Success

You’ll know you’re doing a great job when we see:

Perception of development team effectiveness among stakeholders

Feedback on individual effectiveness among peers

What you’ll bring and who you are

You are:

Experienced in the games industry or interactive real-time 3D graphics development

Highly experienced with C/C++, with hands-on experience using real-time rendering APIs such as Vulkan, DirectX, or similar

Experienced working with Unreal Engine 5

Strong in general software engineering, including integrating a rendering system with other platform services (e.g. messaging systems, backend services)

Comfortable using AI-assisted coding tools as part of your development workflow

Strong in 3D mathematics, including vectors and transformation matrices

Experienced in CPU and GPU optimisation

Comfortable using metrics and data to understand how code performs in production and to inform decisions

Comfortable building, improving, and maintaining build systems

Also, you’ll bring:

Proven problem-solving and debugging skills, including the ability to track down issues in unfamiliar or legacy codebases

Strong hands-on experience working in Linux environments, with confidence using Linux as a primary development platform and ensuring applications also run reliably on Windows for use by other teams (e.g. art and animation).

Awareness of current industry trends, tooling, and best practices in computer graphics and real-time 3D development

Bonus

Experience with or interest in Python or Go

Experience with streaming audio and video or WebRTC

Knowledge of docker and containerization

Machine learning system integration experience

Experience with AWS

We’re proud to be an inclusive workplace that celebrates diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. If this role excites you, we’d love to hear from you - even if you don’t meet every single requirement.

Perks of joining UneeQ

Join a global team with colleagues from around the world

Annual learning allowance to support your professional growth

Health insurance coverage

Wellness allowance (for NZ \& AU employees)

An extra week of annual leave (for NZ \& AU employees)

Participation in our annual Company Summit - yes, we fly in all our employees from around the world!

Flexibility to work from other locations for short periods

On top of that, you’ll get to work in a leading industry, creating innovative AI solutions that have never been tried before!

Our recruitment process

Intro chat

You’ll start with a short call with someone from our People team to learn more about UneeQ, the role, and to share a bit about yourself.

Hiring manager interview

Next, you’ll meet with the Engineering Manager (AI \& Platform) to dive deeper into your experience, the role, and the kind of work you’d be doing.

Live technical session

You’ll take part in a practical, collaborative technical session with senior engineers, focused on real-world problem solving.

Team \& ways-of-working chat

You’ll meet a couple of people you’d work closely with to align on collaboration style, remote working, and day-to-day ways of working.

Final check-in

Finally, you’ll have a short conversation with a member of our executive team.

Offer \& welcome aboard!

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