Senior Developer - XR Rapid Prototyping

Position Overview

• Location Type: Remote
• Job Type: Contract
• Salary: Not Specified
• Location: Remote – able to work 10am – 7pm UK time
• Contract Duration: 5-6 months initial contract
• Start Date: July 2025

Nexus Studios is a global creative studio renowned for its work with award-winning directors across animation, artful live-action, and immersive experiences. The studio is building a fast-moving, small-footprint XR prototyping team to deliver high-impact immersive demos for a forthcoming product. These prototypes are short-cycle, visually striking, and designed to engage prospective partners and stakeholders.

As a Senior Developer, you will be the core hands-on programmer, working under the guidance of the Tech Lead to bring ideas to life quickly and confidently. Your role will involve writing code that enables stunning visuals, experimental interaction, and rapid iteration, balancing aesthetic quality with pragmatic delivery. You should thrive in experimental environments, be excited by creative problem-solving, and enjoy crafting elegant technical solutions, even with evolving tools.

Requirements

What You’ll Do:

• Collaborate with the Tech Lead, Technical Artist, and creative stakeholders to design and implement real-time immersive demo experiences.
• Own the implementation of interaction mechanics, UI elements, and spatial features across short-cycle prototypes.
• Build rapid MVPs using native development tools, Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, and modern XR SDKs.
• Translate creative direction into performant and visually compelling technical output.
• Prototype and test features across a variety of devices and screen contexts.
• Debug, optimize, and polish code for stability and fluid visual output, even with placeholder systems.
• Contribute to light documentation and technical insight to inform future product team development.

What You Will Bring:

• 6+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 2 years in XR, games, or immersive media environments.
• Strong skills in Kotlin or similar modern languages, and hands-on experience with spatial development workflows.
• Strong creative instincts and the ability to bridge technical and visual goals.
• A maker mentality: quick to prototype, comfortable with iteration, and eager to try new tools or approaches.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently in a small, fast-paced team.
• Flexibility and resourcefulness in working with incomplete or experimental SDKs and tooling.

Preferred Experience:

• Prior work on XR/AR/VR prototypes or short-format real-time demos.
• Familiarity with spatial SDKs, computer vision APIs, or novel interaction models.
• Comfort working with real-time engines (Unity), even if not primary tools.
• Collaborating closely with artists, designers, and creative leadership in iterative pipelines.
• An understanding of real-time constraints on mobile or wearable devices.
• Experience writing shaders (GLSL or equivalent) and working in real-time rendering environments.

Company Information & Benefits

Nexus Studios is proud to work with extraordinary talent as an equal opportunity employer. We embrace individuals of all backgrounds regardless of gender, race, age, abilities, or sexual preferences. Our recruitment process is merit-based, ensuring fair treatment to every applicant.

This is a Nexus-led role on a team that sits at the heart of our innovation and storytelling capabilities. You'll be working on the edge of what’s possible, helping to shape immersive experiences that will go on to inform a much larger product vision. If you’re passionate about real-time creativity and like turning big ideas into elegant technical realities, we’d love to talk.