Senior Game Prototype Engineer

Who We Are

At YallaPlay, We are a rapidly growing startup mobile gaming studio on a mission to bring people together through play, we create exciting mobile games that bring joy to millions of players worldwide. Founded in Austin, Texas, we’ve since expanded to Brazil and the UAE, growing our diverse and talented team of creators. We pride ourselves on a fun and collaborative work environment, with a remote-friendly culture and a dedication to producing high-quality, engaging games. Our current titles, including “Spades Masters” (iOS/Android), have been enjoyed by millions of players globally. 

Our passion lies in reinventing card games infusing them with fresh mechanics, beautiful design, and social features that spark connection and excitement. As we continue to scale, we’re looking for creative, driven individuals who are excited to help shape the future of multiplayer mobile gaming in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

Join us and be part of building something big from the ground up.

The Opportunity

We’re building a new rapid-prototyping capability at YallaPlay focused on turning game ideas into complete playable experiences quickly, using AI to dramatically shorten the path from concept to validation.

We’re looking for a Senior Game Prototype Engineer who can independently design and build game prototypes from A to Z. You’ll sit at the intersection of game design, frontend engineering, backend engineering, and UI/UX, taking an initial concept and turning it into something players can actually play and evaluate.

This is not a role where you wait for detailed game designs, UX specifications, or technical requirements. You’ll define the core gameplay, design the player experience, build the client and supporting backend, create or source the assets needed, and deliver a complete playable prototype.

Your job is not to build production-ready games. It is to identify what needs to be tested and build the fastest complete experience capable of answering that question.

You’ll work heavily with AI coding agents and modern development tools to move from idea → design → prototype → playtest → learning → next experiment at high speed.

Some prototypes will survive. Most won’t. That’s expected. Success means helping us discover which ideas deserve further investment before we commit a full production team.

This position can be remote or based at our state-of-the-art offices in Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Take game ideas from concept to complete playable prototype, owning the process from A to Z.
• Define and iterate on the core game mechanics, rules, player flows, controls, progression, and overall gameplay experience.
• Design and implement clear, functional UI/UX that allows players to understand and properly experience the game.
• Build the frontend, game logic, bots, lightweight backend, multiplayer functionality, and other systems required to make the prototype fully playable.
• Use existing, generated, or placeholder art, animation, audio, and other assets to create a prototype that feels complete enough to evaluate fairly.
• Scope ideas down to their smallest meaningful testable version, focusing effort on what needs to be proven rather than building unnecessary features.
• Own the prototype loop end to end: define the hypothesis, build the experience, run playtests, analyze the results, and recommend whether to iterate, progress, or stop.
• Use AI coding agents and AI-assisted development tools as a core part of your workflow to dramatically increase development speed.
• Instrument prototypes with lightweight analytics where needed so decisions can be informed by player behavior as well as qualitative feedback.
• Iterate rapidly based on playtests, data, and feedback.
• When a prototype graduates, package the game rules, learnings, technical approach, and playable build for handoff to the production team.
• Continuously experiment with new AI tools, frameworks, and workflows that improve prototype speed and quality.

What We’re Looking For

What you need to have:

• 5+ years of professional game development experience, or an exceptional portfolio demonstrating equivalent senior-level capability.
• A strong portfolio of at least 5 completed playable games, prototypes, game-jam projects, or commercial titles where you had substantial hands-on ownership.
• Proven ability to independently take a game concept from idea to a complete playable prototype.
• Strong game-design instincts, including mechanics, rules, pacing, player flows, feedback, and game feel.
• Strong programming fundamentals with the ability to work across frontend, game logic, and lightweight backend systems.
• Ability to independently create functional, mobile-friendly UI/UX without relying on dedicated designers.
• Ability to implement bots, APIs, multiplayer functionality, game-state management, and server-side logic when the prototype requires them.
• Experience using AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, or similar as a core part of your development workflow.
• Comfortable using AI-generated, existing, or placeholder visual and audio assets to rapidly produce complete playable experiences.
• Comfortable working independently from an incomplete brief, making both design and technical decisions without detailed specifications.
• Strong judgment around what to build, what to simplify, and when the evidence says to iterate, progress, or stop.

Nice to have:

• Experience prototyping card, board, casual, or multiplayer games.
• Experience with TypeScript/JavaScript and lightweight web game frameworks such as Phaser or PixiJS.
• Experience with server-authoritative multiplayer systems or hidden-information games.
• Unity experience.
• Experience using generative AI for art, animation, audio, or other game assets.
• Experience with analytics or experimentation tools.
• Experience taking prototypes through external player testing.

How We Measure Success

Success in this role is not measured by how much production code you write.

It is measured by:

• Prototype velocity: how quickly meaningful game hypotheses become playable.
• Learning velocity: how quickly prototypes produce clear answers.
• Experiment quality: whether prototypes test the right question without unnecessary scope.
• Decision quality: whether evidence leads to clear iterate, progress, or stop recommendations.
• AI leverage: how effectively AI tools increase the amount and quality of experimentation one person can deliver.
• Independence: how effectively you can take an ambiguous concept and move it forward without detailed direction.
• Handoff quality: whether promising concepts can move into production without losing the important learnings from prototyping.

Why YallaPlay

What You Get

• Real Impact – You’ll work on meaningful projects that reach a global audience.
• Collaborative Culture – Small team, big ambition. We keep things fun, respectful, and feedback-driven.

Benefits & Perks

• Competitive salary

• Remote-first and flexible schedule- Digital nomad friendly

• Generous paid time off

• Paid birthdays off

• UAE visa sponsorship (if applicable)

• Growth opportunities and access to learning resources

• A team that actually loves games—and each other

Next Steps

Ready to join the team? We’d love to hear from you!

• Apply
• Share sample code and projects (GitHub)

We review every application carefully and will be in touch if there’s a fit. Good luck!

5+ years of professional game development experience, or an exceptional portfolio demonstrating equivalent senior-level capability. A strong portfolio of at least 5 completed playable games, prototypes, game-jam projects, or commercial titles where you had substantial hands-on ownership. Proven ability to independently take a game concept from idea to a complete playable prototype. Strong game-design instincts, including mechanics, rules, pacing, player flows, feedback, and game feel. Strong programming fundamentals with the ability to work across frontend, game logic, and lightweight backend systems. Ability to independently create functional, mobile-friendly UI/UX without relying on dedicated designers. Ability to implement bots, APIs, multiplayer functionality, game-state management, and server-side logic when the prototype requires them. Experience using AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, or similar as a core part of your development workflow. Comfortable using AI-generated, existing, or placeholder visual and audio assets to rapidly produce complete playable experiences. Comfortable working independently from an incomplete brief, making both design and technical decisions without detailed specifications. Strong judgment around what to build, what to simplify, and when the evidence says to iterate, progress, or stop.