About the Job

At Hey Studios, we are building a hardware and software platform for connected, immersive, and screen-free play. We’re combining high-quality content with connected devices to create experiences that spark curiosity, help kids grow, and bring families closer together.

We believe that the world 5 years from today will look and feel very different from today. We’ll see intelligent devices embedded in our environment, accessed through interfaces that can feel almost human.

We want to make sure that this technology is used for good: By providing content for children and families that helps them learn and grow.

The Role

As a Game Developer, you build the experiences that run on our platform. Your code is at the heart of immersive, physical learning and play.

You implement the game formats designed by our content team, in close partnership with our engineering and design teams. You combine our many device capabilities to make delightful, surprising experiences: Using audio, voice, display, light, haptics, and sensing of physical objects. You will shape our underlying APIs and game engine where we cannot yet express a new type of interaction or gameplay.

As one of the first employees, you will also shape the foundations of our team and culture.

We want this role to be the most meaningful role of your career: You’ll ship products that will improve the lives of millions of families around the world. We also want our company to be the place where you do your best work: With autonomy, curiosity, optimism, and playfulness.

What You’ll Work On

Experience Design and Implementation

• Implement the game formats and experiences our content team designs
• Turn rough prototypes into robust, replayable experiences
• Design abstractions that allow us to model repeated gameplay scenarios
• Take part in play-testing with families and turn what we learn into changes

API Design and Game Runtime

• Extend our game engine with new capabilities
• Work with our firmware engineers on the device capabilities behind the API
• Optimize experiences for a constrained embedded device
• Improve the creator tooling and debugging workflow that content producers and designers use every day

Our stack includes Lua, C/C++ (ESP-IDF), TypeScript, React, Express, Postgres, and Python.

About You

• You have shipped games or interactive experiences
• You are fluent in at least one game engine or framework (Unity, Godot, Unreal, or similar) and comfortable in scripting languages
• You enjoy building the systems underneath a game: state machines, event handling, sequencing, and tooling
• You are comfortable working close to hardware and within tight constraints on memory, CPU, and latency
• You approach problems with empathy for the people who rely on your products
• You are comfortable with the ambiguity and iteration speed of an early‑stage startup
• You communicate effectively and enjoy collaborating within a small, experienced team

Nice to have

• Experience with embedded systems, ESP32, or FreeRTOS
• Experience with audio programming or real‑time audio pipelines
• Experience with interactive narrative systems or dialogue tools
• An interest in unusual hardware, physical computing, or interactive installations
• Experience working on games or content for children
• Basic audio production skills: editing and mixing
• Experience with Lua, or with embedding a scripting runtime in C/C++ or TypeScript

The Team

We’re a team of builders who love creatively solving problems and crafting experiences that bring joy to families. People on the team have previously built products at ROLI, Stripe, Twitter, the BBC, Education First, and designed their own games.

We are backed by a special group of early investors: Emerge , our lead investor, specialize in the future of learning. Sarah Drinkwater, who invests as a Solo GP through Common Magic , has deep expertise building products with community at their core. Will Gaybrick, President of Stripe, is one of the key architects behind Stripe’s product platform. Stephen Youngwood has grown a beloved and enduring brand as the former CEO of Sesame Street. They all share our optimism and ambition for this opportunity.

We’re offering a competitive cash salary and generous equity packages that reflect the impact you’ll have on the trajectory of the company.

Everyone at the company gets 25 days of annual leave + their birthday off + UK bank holidays, plus private health insurance for you and your family if you choose.

We’re based in London and work together in person for at least 2 days per week. We’re not about performative in-office time, but understand that the best ideas come from everyone being in the same room together. Our office is part maker studio, part hardware lab, and a space for creativity, focus, and debate. Plus, the real magic happens when families come in to try out what we’ve been working on.

Equity Meaningful equity, vesting over 4 years with a 1‑year cliff

Location London, 2+ days in person