• Define and drive the studio’s technical strategy across gameplay engineering, game systems, tools, performance, and platform support. • Partner with creative, production, and design leaders to align technical execution with game vision and business goals. • Establish engineering standards, processes, and staffing plans that scale with the team and product roadmap. • Identify and mitigate technical risks across gameplay features, backend systems, and performance goals. • Oversee the development of gameplay features, character mechanics, AI systems, physics interactions, and animation integrations. • Lead the architecture and implementation of core game systems—including engine extensions, save systems, frameworks, data pipelines, networking components, and optimization paths. • Ensure systems and gameplay engineering teams deliver clean, scalable, maintainable code in alignment with studio best practices. • Provide technical direction and hands-on guidance in complex engineering challenges. • Manage and grow a multi-disciplinary engineering team, including Leads, Senior Engineers, and technical specialists. • Build a culture of ownership, collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. • Mentor engineers in career development, technical skills, and leadership capabilities. • Work closely with Production to define milestones, scope, schedules, and resourcing. • Collaborate with Art and Design to translate creative concepts into technically feasible solutions. • Champion quality by working closely with QA, ensuring performance, stability, and reliability across all releases. • Oversee build pipelines, version control workflows, automation processes, and CI/CD strategies. • Guide performance optimization efforts across platforms and hardware specifications. • Ensure smooth releases and patches through close coordination with publishing, QA, and support teams. • Evaluate, adopt, and integrate new technologies, tools, or workflows.