Technical Lead Unity Engineer

Red Cartel is a Sydney-based XR studio and subsidiary of xReality Group Ltd. We build real-time XR products for our sister company Operator XR, requiring close collaboration between software, hardware, and content teams. Our products operate in contexts where reliability and precision matter. 

You will have genuine ownership of what you build, direct access to leadership, and technically interesting work with real stakes. 

We are hiring a Technical Lead to own a new real-time networked capability within our Operator XR product series, taking it through to a shippable offering. You will provide technical direction, guide the R&D already underway, and be accountable for the output of other engineers on the project. This is a hands-on role: you will write code as well as lead, and you will not need to be managed on the technical side. 

Technical ownership 

• Own the architecture and technical direction of a new real-time networked initiative from your first week and be able to explain that direction plainly to engineering and to leadership. 

• Make the day-to-day technical calls within the project: architecture, tooling, and integration choices. 

• Set and hold the code quality bar through review, so the standard is consistent rather than personal. 

Real-time systems and XR delivery 

• Drive the R&D already underway from exploration through to a shippable product, validating hypotheses and documenting findings as you go. 

• Build in Unity and C# against real-time XR targets, treating latency, stability, and performance as first-class constraints rather than late-stage fixes. 

• Integrate with custom hardware and work through the failure modes that only appear once software meets a physical device. 

• Deliver against sprint and release targets, working directly with the product and QA teams. 

Team leadership 

• Provide technical direction to the engineers on the initiative and be accountable for their output. 

• Mentor less-experienced engineers so that they grow, without making them dependent on you. 

• Anticipate blockers before they become delivery risks and surface them early. 

• Make pragmatic scope calls under tight deadlines without accumulating technical debt that cannot be paid back. 

Process and communication 

• Report the real technical state of the project to leadership and stakeholders, including when it is not on track. 

• Capture knowledge and documentation so that progress is not tied to any single person. 

• Work closely with your management team. product owner, QA, and hardware leads across the Brookvale team. 

• Strong C# and Unity background, with hands-on experience building real-time XR systems. 

• Experience leading a small team through an early-stage technical project with evolving requirements. 

• Comfort operating in an R&D context: exploring novel approaches, validating hypotheses, and documenting what you find. 

• The judgement to make pragmatic scope decisions when research timelines are tight. 

• The ability to set a clear technical direction and communicate it plainly to technical and non-technical audiences. 

• Clear, concise documentation and the ability to collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Field teams. 

• Low-latency networked systems, real-time data pipelines, or performance-critical infrastructure experience, even if it was not the primary focus of past roles. 

• Hardware-in-the-loop development or custom device integration. 

• Background in defence, simulation, or training technology.