About this role
About Sandbox
Sandbox Group builds learning and play experiences for children and families. Our brands include PlayKids, Leiturinha, Coolmath Games, Focus and LearnMath, used by children and parents across Latin America, North America and Europe. Our products run on a shared, multi-tenant platform on Google Cloud: content management, app building, subscriptions, identity and observability, built once and serving every brand.
We are building our Global Competency Centre in Mumbai as the home of Sandbox engineering. This is a founding leadership role: you will hire the team, set its standards and own its delivery from day one.
Team
Unity game developers
The role
You will lead Sandbox's Unity games team as its most senior engineer and its manager. You stay hands-on in the code while running the team that builds and runs the educational games behind Focus, LearnMath and TellMeWow, and new titles such as our books app.
What you'll do
- Lead and manage a team of Unity game developers: hiring, 1:1s, goals, reviews and day-to-day delivery
- Stay hands-on: write and review C# code, and own the hardest technical problems in the games
- Run the team AI-first: use AI agents and assistants for C# code, tests, tooling, asset pipelines and documentation, with clear review standards
- Set the technical direction for our shared game framework, content pipeline and performance on low-end devices
- Run build and release for iOS, Android and web: CI pipelines, store signing and store compliance (including Kids categories)
- Own live-ops: remote config, A/B tests, analytics events, ad and in-app purchase SDK integrations
- Take ownership of an existing codebase quickly, documenting what is undocumented and reducing key-person risk
- Integrate games with our shared platform: sign-in, subscription entitlements, content and analytics events
- Plan sprints with product and design, and report progress and risk to the CTO
What you'll bring
- 12+ years in software engineering, including 8+ years in game development with Unity (C#) and 3+ years managing engineers
- Hands-on AI-first development experience: daily use of AI coding agents (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) to design, write, test and refactor game code, and a record of raising team productivity with them
- Shipped multiple mobile games on iOS and Android, including live titles you supported after launch
- Deep Unity knowledge: architecture patterns, Addressables/asset bundles, UI Toolkit or uGUI, profiling and optimisation for mobile and WebGL
- Built and maintained Unity CI/CD (e.g. Unity Build Automation, GitHub Actions, Fastlane) and store submission
- Experience integrating ad mediation, IAP, analytics and remote-config SDKs
- Has built and scaled an engineering team in India, including hiring through agencies and direct sourcing
- Works daily with stakeholders in the UK, Brazil and the US across time zones; clear written and spoken English
- Uses AI coding tools (e.g. Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor) in their own work and drives adoption across the team
Nice to have
- Built games for kids, or learning games (literacy, maths, focus or life-skills)
- Knowledge of child-safe design: COPPA, GDPR-K, Apple Kids Category and Google Play Families policies
- Experience with adaptive learning, progress tracking or curriculum-aligned content
- Unity for Smart TV or web; multiplayer or backend services for games
- Children's products, edtech or consumer subscription apps; knowledge of COPPA, GDPR-K and the UK Age Appropriate Design Code
Success in the first 12 months
- Unity team hired and productive within the first quarter
- Full ownership of the live game titles, with build, release and live-ops documented and repeatable
- The books app and the next games shipped on the agreed roadmap
- Games use the shared platform for sign-in, entitlements and analytics events