Founding Technical Director

You're the founding technical director of the simulation game platform. You report to Aviv Sheriff, our Simulation Game Director, and work closely with him. You set the architecture and own the infrastructure every game runs on.

This is an in-the-weeds super IC role on a small team of senior game developers. The team operates like a startup: diverse problems, few lanes, and room to expand your scope fast.

We use AI across the full game development pipeline, and we're unapologetically pro-business, pro-entrepreneurship and pro-wealth-creation. The platform you build should make both of those obvious to every player.

In priority order:

1. The platform and simulation runtime. Own state, netcode, the simulation runtime and the architecture, built to support 100,000+ concurrent players. Keep production code at live-game quality.

2. AI-first authoring tools. Build the game-authoring engine so designers and artists can build, tune and ship simulations without an engineer. Optimize it for creative output and quality.

3. The development process. Own CI, guardrails and evals, and manage the coding agent fleet that writes most of our code, so anyone on the team can deploy safely at AI speed.

4. LLM orchestration and adaptive systems. Build the systems that let games learn and react to each player's progress and context.

5. Observability. Full visibility into player analytics, our own development workflows, and LLMs in production.

6. Simulation design. Co-design the game simulations with Aviv so they teach real skills.

• Managing a big engineering org. You're a super IC on a small team. You direct agents more than people, and you write production code yourself.

• Research. We're shipping a real product to real teenagers on a hard timeline. If it doesn't ship, it doesn't count.

• Owning game direction or the look. Aviv owns game direction and the Art Director owns art. You co-design the simulations and build the tools both of them use.

• Hand-writing every line. The agent fleet writes most of the code. Your job is the architecture, guardrails, evals and review that keep it at live-game quality.

• Building one game. You're building the platform the studio ships game after game on. One-off code that can't be reused is a cost, not a win.

Prototype to playtest. Aviv builds a new game mechanic in Claude over the weekend. On Monday you get it onto the platform, wire it into the simulation runtime and state, and put it behind the guardrails. By the end of the week, players are testing it.

Fixing the tool, not the level. A designer wants to rebuild and retune a simulation's economy. They do it in your authoring tools without filing a ticket. When they hit a wall, you fix the tool so the next designer never hits it.

Morning agent review. The agents opened a stack of PRs overnight. CI and evals catch most of the problems. You review the ones that touch architecture, reject what doesn't hold up, and tighten a guardrail so the same mistake can't come back.

An LLM goes off script. An LLM-driven system starts reacting badly to how players are progressing. Your observability shows exactly where. You fix the orchestration and add an eval so it's caught before it ships next time.

1. Prototype to production in days. A prototype anyone builds with Claude reaches the platform and playtests within days.

2. Production-grade at AI speed. Guardrails let anyone on the team deploy safely. Prototyping stays fast and the codebase stays production-grade.

3. Designers don't need engineers. Designers build and tune a full simulation with your authoring tools, no engineer needed.

At 6 months:

• Prototype to production: a prototype anyone builds with Claude reaches the platform and playtests within days.

• Dev workflows: guardrails let anyone on the team deploy code safely, keeping prototyping fast and the codebase production-grade at AI speed.

• Authoring tools: designers build and tune a full simulation with your authoring tools, no engineer needed.

• Scale: the platform architecture supports 100,000+ concurrent players.

• Observability: full visibility into player analytics, our own development workflows, and LLMs in production.

At 12 months: The studio is shipping game after game on your platform, built on the same engine, authoring tools and pipelines. You own every development pipeline the studio runs on.

The path from here is CTO of the simulation game platform, owning every development pipeline as the studio ships game after game. That path belongs to whoever builds the platform that makes it possible.

$400,000 base. Cash compensation (no equity) + relocation covered. As you hit the early milestones, there's room for this salary to increase aggressively. The role is hybrid in NYC.

• You've owned part of a big live game's infrastructure.

• You've led the tech on a game from zero to one.

• You build with AI agents every day, and you can show us something real you built with them: a game, tool or pipeline where agents wrote most of the code, and how you kept it production-quality.

• You write production code yourself and want to stay in the weeds as a super IC.

• Based in or able to relocate to NYC for a hybrid schedule (relocation covered).

• You're authorized to work in the US.

• You've built and/or operated a user-facing AI product.

• You've shipped a sandbox, sim, tycoon or builder game.

• You've played hundreds of hours in relevant games.

• A passion for or interest in simulations, AI, education, or all of the above.

• Someone who wants a typical game studio job: a big team, clear lanes, and a specialist for everything. We're a very lean team operating like an indie studio or a startup.

• A researcher. We ship a real product to real teenagers on a hard timeline.

• An architect who has stopped writing code, or a manager who wants to lead through a big team.

• Someone who thinks AI is overhyped or a threat to their craft.

• Someone looking for a side project, a stepping stone, or a cushy job. You're joining at zero and the expectations are extreme.

• Someone who thinks "founder" is a dirty word or that capitalism needs to be apologized for. You will hate every meeting we have.