The Lead Programmer is responsible for day-to-day technical leadership across The Conformist and key Torpor Games pipelines. This role translates technical direction into concrete implementation plans, leads technical execution, and ensures that systems, tools, and workflows remain stable, scalable, and aligned with production needs. The Lead Programmer works closely with the Technical Director and with design, narrative, art, production, and QA leadership to support both in-development projects and live operations.

Job requirements

Essential

• Extensive experience as a programmer or technical lead on shipped game projects.
• Strong proficiency with Unity and C#, including system architecture, UI, and tooling integration.
• Proven experience working on narrative-heavy games, strategy games, or comparable projects with complex branching content, state management, and data-driven systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical execution and coordinate engineers across multiple projects or pipelines.
• Experience planning and delivering features within milestone-driven production environments.
• Strong collaboration skills across design, narrative, art, production, and QA.
• Experience establishing coding standards, review processes, and maintainable technical practices.
• Ability to balance hands-on implementation with leadership and coordination responsibilities.

Preferred

• Experience supporting live operations, post-launch updates, or DLC pipelines.
• Familiarity with localization workflows, modding support, or content-heavy tooling environments.
• Practical understanding of AI-assisted development workflows, including strengths, limitations, and appropriate use cases in production environments.
• Experience evaluating and integrating AI tools responsibly within engineering pipelines, with awareness of quality, security, and maintainability considerations.
• Experience building or maintaining internal tools and content pipelines.
• Experience working in mid-sized or growing studios with multiple concurrent projects.
• Familiarity with dialogue systems, branching narrative tooling, or political/economic simulation mechanics.
• Experience with performance profiling, optimization, and technical debt management.
• Familiarity with web technologies, backend development, python, or cloud services such as Node.js or Firebase.

Job responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day technical execution for The Conformist and provide technical leadership across additional Torpor Games pipelines, including LiveOps, localization, modding support, and internal tools.
• Coordinate a team of technical contributors, including engineering and functionally aligned roles such as QA Lead, ensuring clear ownership and follow-through.
• Own technical planning for features and pipelines, aligning scope, timelines, risk mitigation, and technical debt remediation with production priorities.
• Unblock team members through hands-on support, code review, and implementation guidance.
• Establish and maintain coding standards, review routines, and practices that ensure quality and maintainability across projects.
• Partner with Design, Narrative, Art, and Production leadership to ensure technical solutions support content workflows and player-facing goals.
• Support build stability and release readiness by coordinating with QA, triaging issues, and driving fixes across milestones.
• Own onboarding, technical documentation, and knowledge transfer to keep pipelines accessible and team members effective.

Job benefits

• Health & Wellbeing. Free Urban Sports Club membership for all Berlin-based permanent employees.
• Public Transportation. Fully covered Deutschland-Ticket (BVG) for nationwide public transport.
• Flexible Hours. Start your day between 8:00–10:00 CET with core hours from 10:00–15:00 CET.
• Hybrid Work. We embrace a hybrid work schedule, requiring in-office presence on 3 days, with the flexibility to work remotely for the remaining 2 days of the week (calculation is based on full-time position).
• Work from Abroad. Up to 10 remote work days per year from outside Germany.
• Team Events. Regular team events and access to the NLND community network.
• Feedback & Growth. Regular feedback sessions to support your development.
• Annual Bonus. Performance-based annual bonus.
• Vacation. 24 paid vacation days (full-time).