Lead Software Engineer

Level is a learning technology company dedicated to helping students build real academic and life skills with confidence and joy. We combine proven curriculum principles with world class interactive design to make meaningful practice something students want to come back to, not something they struggle through.

We support what teachers, schools, and parents are already doing by increasing student engagement with high quality, standards aligned practice that reinforces classroom learning. That’s why we’re building:

For students: Rewarding and motivating learning experiences that meet students where they are to build real academic proficiency.

For educators: Tools that fit naturally into instruction and help students stay engaged while reducing teacher workload.

For parents: Activities that help your kid catch up or get ahead, build confidence, and minimize homework battles, whether learning at school or at home.

We are committed to helping every person maximize their potential and live a life of meaning. It’s a difficult problem that requires brilliant people and tremendous effort over time.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will guide a team of engineers while architecting and driving the development of the core technologies and systems underpinning our games. Combining hands-on technical leadership with people leadership, you'll set direction for your team, mentor its members, and tackle complex, often ambiguous challenges crucial to delivering high-quality, performant, and engaging games.

What You Will Do:

• Lead an Engineering Team: Guide, mentor, and grow a team of engineers — setting technical direction, supporting their development, and fostering a high-trust, high-output environment.

• Architect Core Game Systems: Design, develop, and lead the implementation of major systems and foundational technologies for our games, balancing hands-on contribution with team oversight.

• Define Technical Strategy in Ambiguity: Navigate complex game development challenges and technical unknowns. Identify key technical risks and opportunities, define strategic approaches, and create robust, scalable technical designs your team can execute against.

• Drive Delivery & Execution: Plan, prioritize, and shepherd your team's work — breaking down ambiguous goals into clear milestones, unblocking engineers, and ensuring high-quality, on-time delivery.

• Champion Performance & Quality: Uphold a high bar for maintainable, performant code through code review, technical standards, and a culture of continuous improvement.

• Cross-Disciplinary Leadership: Partner closely with engineering leadership, game designers, artists, producers, and other discipline leads to translate creative visions into concrete technical roadmaps and high-performance solutions.

• Establish Engineering Best Practices: Help shape and embody a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and iterative development across the engineering organization.

• Own Critical Technical Domains: Take accountability for complex technical areas vital to our games' success, driving their evolution, stability, and performance through your team.

• Proactive Problem Solving: Anticipate and address technical challenges, performance bottlenecks, architectural limitations, and potential scaling issues before they impact development or players.

• Hire & Grow the Team: Participate in recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding engineers as the team scales.

• Other tasks related or beneficial to the above or the work of the Company.

What You Need:

• Proven experience leading engineering teams — including direct mentorship, technical guidance, and growing engineers' careers — while staying meaningfully hands-on in code.

• Expert-level development experience using C/C++/C#, with mastery in building complex, performant, real-time systems.

• Significant experience architecting and developing core systems for complex, interactive applications.

• Deep proficiency with real-time engines, including experience modifying or extending engine systems to suit unique application needs.

• Demonstrated ability to design, document, and implement complex, scalable, and maintainable software architectures, especially in new or evolving domains.

• Track record of thriving in fast-paced, ambiguous environments — defining technical direction, making critical decisions with incomplete information, and leading projects with significant scope from inception to ship.

• Strong project leadership skills: scoping, planning, prioritization, and shipping under real-world constraints.

• Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical ideas clearly and collaborate effectively with diverse teams (technical and non-technical) in a dynamic, potentially remote setting.

• A genuine commitment to mentorship, team growth, and building a positive engineering culture.

Nice to Have:

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in game development and prior experience as a Lead, Tech Lead, or Engineering Manager.

• Multiple shipped commercial game titles with demonstrable contributions to core engine systems or foundational architecture, ideally in a leadership capacity.

• Experience hiring and scaling engineering teams.

• Contributions to game development communities — GDC talks, published technical writing, or open-source projects.

• Experience leading distributed teams across multiple time zones with asynchronous collaboration workflows.