VP of Engineering & AI

Big Viking Games is hiring a Head of Engineering & AI to drive AI-first transformation across our live-service games while providing hands-on engineering leadership for our development teams. Reporting to the CEO, this role owns the technical roadmap for AI/ML capabilities, game and backend architecture, engineering standards, and infrastructure across the portfolio.

Big Viking Games is a profitable, self-funded live-service studio based in Toronto. Founded in 2011, the company has been building and operating virtual worlds for over a decade.

Our flagship games, YoWorld and Fish World, have served millions of players over their lifetime through deep in-game economies built around virtual goods, player-to-player trading, and long-term engagement. We operate with the speed and conviction of a startup, backed by the stability of a proven business.

BVG is actively investing in a 2.0 product roadmap, a next-generation rebuild of our games with the potential to significantly expand our addressable market. We are re-architecting how we work with AI and agentic systems, modernizing our game and backend infrastructure, and rethinking how we deliver personalized, dynamic player experiences. This role sits at the intersection of applied AI and live-service game engineering, and is responsible for building the technical foundation for what comes next.

The ideal candidate is an AI-forward technical leader who combines hands-on applied AI/ML experience with the ability to lead game engineering teams through complex technical challenges. You are equally comfortable driving organization-wide AI adoption as you are shipping scalable, production-grade game systems. You thrive in environments where you can architect strategic solutions, move at startup velocity with emerging technologies, and roll up your sleeves to solve hard technical problems.

Requirements

• Architect and build agentic systems for automated game content production (art, items, events, narrative) and live-ops workflows
• Lead implementation of AI-native features across our games, including intelligent NPCs, dynamic in-game interactions, AI-assisted moderation, and real-time player personalization
• Design and build scalable data pipelines that integrate player behaviour, social graphs, CRM data, and game telemetry to power AI-driven decisions across live ops, monetization, and retention
• Drive adoption of AI tooling and workflows across engineering, game design, art, product, and live-ops teams
• Own the technical roadmap for AI/ML capabilities supporting current titles (YoWorld, Fish World) and the 2.0 game platform
• Build context engineering systems and infrastructure to enable agentic automation across both internal studio operations and live game environments

• Serve as a key member of the leadership team, translating technical capabilities into business and product strategy
• Own engineering budget priorities and investment trade-offs aligned with studio and game-level goals
• Evaluate and manage third-party technology partnerships, game tech vendors, middleware, and build-vs-buy decisions
• Partner with game design, product, and creative leadership on technical feasibility, architecture decisions, and implementation planning
• Prepare and present technical updates to the CEO and Board, including roadmap progress, risks, and trade-offs

• Provide technical direction for client (Unity) and backend game services teams
• Drive strategy, architecture, and adoption of AI-enabled software development practices across the engineering organization
• Establish engineering standards, workflows, and best practices across the game development lifecycle, from prototyping to live operations
• Own cloud infrastructure strategy, cost optimization, and scaling decisions for live game services
• Ensure live-service reliability, security posture, anti-cheat and fraud controls, and incident management practices
• Elevate Dev Ops and SRE maturity including build pipelines, deployment automation, observability, and infrastructure-as-code for live games
• Collaborate with data…