Staff Software Engineer, AI Authoring at Unity in Mountain View, CA, USA

Job description

• At Unity, we're shaping the future of real-time 3D technology by building AI to transform how games are created and experienced. From intelligent authoring tools to new ways of interacting with content, we're engineering the next generation of pipelines that make 3D game development faster, more immersive, and more efficient.
• We're seeking a versatile, self-driven Staff Software Engineer to raise the bar on reliability, scalability, performance, and maintainability of our AI authoring products. You'll drive operational excellence via DevOps best practices, including CI/CD automation, Kubernetes management, infrastructure-as-code, agentic troubleshooting, and robust disaster recovery strategies.
• You'll establish cross-team standards for infrastructure and deployments, build a trustworthy A/B testing framework, manage software releases with client-server compatibility in mind, and drive observability across system health and business metrics. The systems you build will span high-level architecture down to hands-on implementation, powering asset generation, LLM inference, and the ML-driven tools that bring AI-assisted game creation to life.

Responsibilities

• Partner closely with product, design, and other engineering teams to influence the product roadmap.
• Contribute to technical strategy and architectural decisions for Unity AI and backend platforms, balancing short-term delivery with long-term product health.
• Design and implement sustainable, scalable solutions for Unity AI products, pushing the boundaries of the Unity Editor with cutting-edge AI agent technologies.
• Improve the reliability, performance, observability, security, and cost-efficiency of our backend systems, and support investigations into issues like performance regressions and network latency through strong observability and monitoring.
• Run technical spikes with developers to address application infrastructure needs on Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
• Build and mature the infrastructure and processes for promoting application code from development to production, writing high-quality, maintainable infrastructure-as-code and Helm deployments, and defining best practices for Terraform Cloud, Helm, and Kubernetes.

Requirements

• Experience building and shipping complex, user-facing software products at scale
• Experience delivering and supporting cloud backend services using Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Argo, GitHub Actions)
• Hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform
• Proven track record in observability, including monitoring, logging, alerting, and debugging tools such as Grafana to ensure system reliability and performance
• Strong grasp of software delivery best practices and network security, paired with a quality-first mindset
• Ability to translate business and user needs into technical solutions
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to align stakeholders across disciplines and organizations
• Exposure to ML infrastructure or LLM inference deployment
• Backend service development experience, including API design
• Familiarity with networking, caching, real-time data pipelines, and relational databases such as PostgreSQL
• Familiarity with languages such as C#/.NET, Python, or Go
• Familiarity with Unity or similar 3D engines

Skills

Required

• Terraform
• Kubernetes
• Helm
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform
• Observability tools (e.g., Grafana)
• Network security
• Software delivery best practices

Preferred

• ML infrastructure
• LLM inference deployment
• Backend service development
• API design
• Networking
• Caching
• Real-time data pipelines
• PostgreSQL

Benefits

• At Unity, we want our team members to thrive. We offer a wide range of benefits designed to support well-being and work-life balance.
• Please note: Benefits eligibility, specific offerings, and coverage vary based on the country and employment status.
• While specific benefits vary, here are some of the ways we strive to take care of our eligible team members globally: Comprehensive health, life, and disability insurance | Commute subsidy | Employee stock ownership | Competitive retirement/pension plans | Generous vacation and personal days | Support for new parents through leave and family-care programs | Office food snacks | Mental Health and Wellbeing programs and support | Employee Resource Groups | Global Employee Assistance Program | Training and development programs | Volunteering and donation matching program
• Base Salary Range: We determine the base salary range for this role based on your primary work location:
• Zone A: $218,400 - $283,900
• Zone B: $194,100 - $252,300
• Zone C: $172,200 - $223,900
• This range reflects the anticipated base salary for this position. Beyond base salary, this role may be eligible for equity awards and participation in our company incentive plans (such as annual discretionary bonuses or sales commissions). The final offer amount will depend on several factors, including geographic location and the candidate’s relevant experience, professional background, and skill set.