Student Casual – Student Unity Programmer – Psychology – Grade 6 – 907684

Post title

Student Unity Programmer

College/Division

College of Life and Environmental Sciences

School/Department

Psychology

Full time/Part time

Part time

Duration of the Post

02/11/2026 – 31/12/2026

Grade

6

Hourly rate

£16.92 per hour plus holiday entitlement

Number of positions available

1

Closing Date

19/10/2026 at 23:55

Please note that this vacancy may be taken down early depending on the number of applications received. We advise you to submit your application promptly.

Our offer to you

At the University of Birmingham, Worklink is the dedicated student employment service which helps students to find flexible, well paid part-time roles that fit around your studies. Each year, the University invests more than £2.5 million to employ 3,000 of our own students in a wide range of roles, supporting our student community into part-time work. Roles available via Worklink include a range of positions, including administrative roles, support staff such as cleaners or baristas, research roles and many more.

Jobs through Worklink help you to gain work experience, develop skills relevant for your future career, and improve your soft and hard skills in a professional setting. Enhance your CV and get valuable experience ready for graduate roles and feel connected to your university and local community.

Our jobs are flexible and can be scheduled around your academic commitments, so you can focus on your studies first. Our team are passionate about supporting students into work. Worklink are based in a central location on campus which is easily accessible for students and can also be contacted online.

Find out more about working through Worklink here or via the student intranet.

Job summary

We are looking for a student with experience in Unity and C# to help us programme a virtual reality experiment for a psychology research project.  The role is for 15 hours per week for 8 weeks.

The experiment involves a brief, approximately five-minute encoding experience in VR, which will later be used to test participants’ memory. The scientific design of the study will be provided. We need someone who can translate this into a reliable VR experiment.

Main duties

• Building the experimental scene in Unity, using existing online assets where appropriate
• Programming the sequence of events during the VR experience
• Implementing any required participant movement or interaction
• Recording key experimental events and participant responses
• Exporting data in a format suitable for analysis
• Deploying and testing the experiment on Meta Quest and, with support from the research team, our bespoke VR headset
• Testing and debugging the experiment
• Refining the programme following pilot testing
• Providing the final Unity project and clear documentation so that the research team can run it independently

Required knowledge, skills, qualifications & experience

• You should have demonstrable experience using Unity and C#. This might come from coursework, a dissertation or project, game development, a placement, or your own personal projects

• Experience developing for VR/XR, particularly Meta Quest, OpenXR or Unity’s XR Interaction Toolkit, would be an advantage

• You do not need previous experience conducting psychology experiments although an interest 

• We are looking for someone who can work independently, communicate clearly, and build a robust piece of software from a clear research specification

Further details

• The role is for 15 hours per week for 8 weeks.

For any informal queries, please contact Heather Flowe (h.flowe@bham.ac.uk)

The University of Birmingham restricts all students to working up to 20 hours per week during term time for a maximum of 13 consecutive weeks. If your application is successful and your course does not follow the usual academic term timetable (e.g.  PGT, PGR or PhD student), you and your supervisor must formally agree vacation periods if this role exceeds 20 hours per week. In addition to this, please be aware if you are an international student you will be required to apply to the Registry for the appropriate authorised absence. 

You are only eligible to apply to this role if you are a current University of Birmingham student. If you are not a University of Birmingham student your application will not be considered.

To work you will need to carry out a right to work check. These checks will need to be completed prior to work commencing.

Regarding the use of AI in applications, we review hundreds of applications and shortlist candidates based on their unique perspective, motivations and potential. Cover letters generated through, or edited by, AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT or CoPilot) are easy to identify. They produce generic answers and will not score highly enough to progress. You may use AI tools for research, but all written content in your application must be your own work. Authenticity and originality are key to standing out in this process. 

Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we’re unable to contact all applicants individually. You can check the progress of your application by logging into the Worklink jobs portal using the same email address you used to apply. If you haven’t heard back within six weeks of the closing date, please assume your application has been unsuccessful.