Conversational AI Engineer - Game Prototype

Remote · at least 4 hours overlap with US Pacific · Contractor · Initial 3-month engagement

The Role

We are prototyping a new game where AI-driven conversations with NPCs are a core part of the player experience.

We're looking for a mid-level Conversational AI Engineer to help us design and build the AI technology stack behind those interactions.

The core problem: a player speaks to an NPC, and the NPC answers out loud, in character, fast enough to feel like a conversation - target, e.g. under 1 second. If you have built a loop like that and measured where the time goes, we want to hear from you. If you haven't, this role is not a fit.

This is a hands-on engineering role. You will choose the technologies, design the conversational architecture, connect the pieces and build the system in Unity.

What You'll Do

You will own the technical implementation of the prototype's conversational AI system, including:

• Design and build the end-to-end voice conversation pipeline between players and NPCs.
• Evaluate and integrate speech-to-text (STT), LLM, text-to-speech (TTS), and speech-to-speech technologies.
• Evaluate different approaches to conversational memory, context, personality, and NPC behavior.
• Prototype real-time conversational interactions and optimize for latency, quality, reliability, and cost.
• Determine which components should run on-device versus in the cloud.
• Build and integrate the resulting systems into Unity/C#.
• Establish an architecture that can evolve from a prototype into a production system.

You'll work closely with the game design and engineering team to determine what the technology needs to accomplish and how best to make it feel natural and responsive to players.

Our Stack

We have no fixed stack. You will choose it, and you will justify each choice with numbers you measured: response time, cost per conversation minute and how often it fails.

What We're Looking For

Must have (all three):

• 5+ years of professional software engineering.
• At least one shipped project built in Unity with C# (a released game, app or production tool). You will be asked to link it.
• A working voice conversation loop you built yourself, end to end: speech in, language model, speech out. You will be asked to link or demo it.

Nice to have:

• Game AI, NPC systems or interactive entertainment
• Conversational memory and agent architectures
• On-device speech or language models
• Multilingual or language-focused AI systems

Not A Fit If

• Your AI experience is mostly prompt writing, or chat apps built on a single API.
• You have not shipped anything in Unity.
• You want to research or train models rather than build a playable prototype.

Who You'll Be

You'll be deciding what sits between the player's voice and the NPC's reply, not implementing an architecture someone hands you.

You like getting from "let's try this" to a working build fast, with little process and a lot of ownership.

Engagement

Remote · at least 4 hours overlap with US Pacific · Contractor · Initial 3-month engagement

The initial engagement will focus on designing and building a working prototype of the conversational AI system in Unity.

For the right person, there may be an opportunity to continue working with the team as the project moves beyond the prototype stage.

To Apply

We look at the work before the resume. Applications without all three items below are not reviewed.

1. Your resume and cover letter.
2. A link to a voice or conversational system you built (repo, video, live demo or write-up). Tell us which parts you built yourself.
3. Short answers, a few sentences each, in your own words:
   • In that system, what was the time from the player finishing speaking to the reply starting, and where did that time go?
   • What did you run on-device and what in the cloud, and why?
   • What would you try first to make an NPC remember a player between sessions?

Shortlisted people will walk us through their demo on a 30-minute call.