Principal AI Engineer (AI games)

UserWise is an innovative game production studio focused on developing and scaling mobile games worldwide using AI-assisted workflows. Unlike traditional game teams, UserWise emphasizes ownership, clarity, and rapid execution, leveraging AI-driven processes to accelerate game development from concept to live operations. The team operates globally, building production-ready games and scaling them efficiently through LiveOps.

Key Responsibilities
- Own the technical architecture for AI and automation across the studio, establishing shared infrastructure, engineering standards, and best practices.
- Develop AI agents, tools, and automated workflows that support the entire game production lifecycle, from opportunity research and prototyping to creative production, QA, launch testing, and LiveOps.
- Design reusable systems that enable teams to move faster through the stages of idea generation, prototyping, testing, and launching.
- Integrate external AI models and APIs (such as Claude Code, MCP servers, Cursor) with development environments including Unity pipelines and internal tools.
- Build AI-powered analysis and reporting tools that transform game, production, and user acquisition data into actionable insights.
- Create monitoring systems to track workflow health, identify bottlenecks, failures, and data gaps before they impact production.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Product Builders, Producers, UA, Creative, QA, and Game Operations to identify and automate high-impact manual tasks.
- Develop AI-assisted workflows within Unity and other environments to provide meaningful production leverage.
- Continuously evaluate new AI models, tools, and approaches, adopting those that offer measurable advantages and retiring ineffective ones.
- Enhance the reliability, scalability, observability, and cost efficiency of AI systems as usage grows.
- Establish practical guardrails around data access, security, quality, evaluation, and human review.
- Serve as the senior technical expert on applied AI within the studio, mentoring engineers and enabling both technical and non-technical teams to use AI effectively.

Required Qualifications
- Extensive software engineering experience with a proven track record of designing and shipping production systems.
- Recent hands-on experience building with large language models (LLMs), AI APIs, agents, or automation platforms.
- Demonstrated success delivering AI-powered systems, internal tools, or automation workflows used in production environments.
- Strong programming and systems engineering fundamentals.
- Experience with modern LLM development patterns, including tool/function calling, agentic workflows, model integration, evaluation, and orchestration.
- Proficiency integrating APIs, third-party platforms, and cloud-based systems.
- Solid understanding of data pipelines, analytics, and leveraging data to drive automated decisions or reporting.
- Ability to design reusable, scalable, and reliable systems rather than one-off prototypes.
- Skill in translating ambiguous problems across product, design, art, user acquisition, QA, and operations into effective technical solutions.
- Sound judgment regarding build vs. buy decisions, model selection, performance, reliability, security, and cost considerations.
- Comfort working in a fast-evolving technical environment where tools and models change rapidly.
- High ownership mindset, with the ability to identify problems, make decisions, and deliver solutions independently.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits
- Experience with Unity and C# development.
- Background in building tools or infrastructure specifically for game development.
- Experience in mobile gaming or other fast-iteration consumer products.
- Familiarity with free-to-play (F2P) metrics including retention, engagement, cost per install (CPI), monetization, and lifetime value (LTV).

Benefits and Work Environment
UserWise offers a studio-wide impact where your work improves how multiple teams operate. The role provides high ownership, blending architecture with hands-on execution in a fast-paced environment that values rapid prototyping, deployment, and iteration. AI is deeply embedded in all aspects of game design, build, testing, and scaling, with a focus on practical, production-first solutions and minimal bureaucracy.

The company provides competitive compensation, paid time off, performance bonuses, and annual performance reviews to support your growth and success.