Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Gaming

Location: Serbia

Employment Type: Full-Time

Industry: Gaming / Interactive Entertainment

Reporting To: CEO / Founder

About the Role:

We are looking for an exceptional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to lead the technology and engineering organization of a fast-growing gaming company in Serbia. The CTO will own the company's technology vision, game development architecture, engineering strategy, technical delivery, infrastructure, and technology team. This is a hands-on strategic leadership role for someone who combines deep technical expertise with strong commercial and product understanding. The ideal candidate has a proven track record in game development and technology leadership, with experience taking games from concept and prototyping through production, launch, and live operations. You will work closely with the CEO, Product, Game Design, Art, Publishing, and Operations teams to build scalable technology and deliver high-quality gaming experiences to a global audience.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Technology Strategy & Vision:

- Define and execute the company's long-term technology strategy aligned with business and product objectives.

- Establish the technical vision and architecture for current and future game titles.

- Evaluate emerging technologies, tools, platforms, engines, and development methodologies.

- Identify opportunities to use AI, automation, analytics, cloud technologies, and other emerging capabilities to improve game development and player experiences.

- Establish technology standards, engineering principles, and best practices across the organization.

- Build a scalable technology roadmap supporting future titles, platforms, and markets.

2. Game Technology & Development:

- Provide technical leadership across the complete game-development lifecycle: concept, prototype, production, launch, and live operations.

- Oversee game architecture, gameplay systems, backend services, multiplayer infrastructure, APIs, tools, SDK integrations, and platform technologies.

- Guide technical decisions around Unity, Unreal Engine, C++, C#, backend technologies, cloud infrastructure, databases, CI/CD, and DevOps.

- Ensure games are optimized for performance, scalability, stability, security, and platform requirements.

- Establish reusable technology frameworks and tools that accelerate development across multiple titles.

- Partner with Game Directors and Lead Developers to resolve complex technical and production challenges.

3. Engineering Leadership:

- Build, lead, mentor, and scale a high-performing engineering organization.

- Define engineering team structure, roles, responsibilities, career paths, and hiring plans.

- Recruit senior technical leaders and key engineering talent in Serbia and internationally.

- Establish effective engineering processes including code reviews, technical design reviews, documentation, testing, CI/CD, and release management.

- Create a culture of ownership, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.

- Develop engineering leadership capabilities across the organization.

4. Architecture, Infrastructure & Scalability:

- Own the technical architecture of game and platform infrastructure.

- Design systems capable of supporting significant player growth and global distribution.

- Oversee cloud infrastructure, server architecture, networking, databases, observability, monitoring, and disaster recovery.

- Establish high standards for system availability, reliability, security, and performance.

- Optimize infrastructure and technology costs without compromising player experience.

- Ensure technology is designed for scalability from early prototypes through millions of players where applicable.

5. Live Games & Player Experience:

- Partner with Product and Game Operations teams to support live games and continuous releases.

- Build technology capabilities for telemetry, analytics, experimentation, personalization, matchmaking, player services, and live events where relevant.

- Establish systems for monitoring crashes, performance, player behavior, and technical KPIs.

- Drive continuous improvements in game stability, loading times, performance, and overall player experience.

6. Product & Business Partnership:

- Work closely with the CEO and leadership team to translate business strategy into technology initiatives.

- Contribute to product strategy, game concepts, technical feasibility, budgets, timelines, and investment decisions.

- Provide accurate technical estimates, risk assessments, and delivery forecasts.

- Balance speed of execution with technical quality and long-term maintainability.

- Evaluate third-party technology providers, vendors, platforms, and development partners.

- Manage technology budgets and prioritize investment based on business impact.

7. Security, Compliance & Risk:

- Establish appropriate cybersecurity and data-protection standards.

- Ensure technology complies with relevant platform, privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.

- Identify and mitigate technical risks across development and live operations.

- Establish appropriate backup, recovery, access-control, and business-continuity processes.

Candidate Profile:

Required Experience:

- 15+ years of experience in software engineering, game technology, or related technical fields.

- 5+ years in senior engineering/technology leadership, preferably as VP Engineering, Head of Technology, Engineering Director, Technical Director, or CTO.

- Proven experience in the gaming industry with shipped commercial titles.

- Experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams and large-scale technical initiatives.

- Strong understanding of the complete game-development lifecycle.

- Experience with one or more major game engines, particularly Unreal Engine or Unity.

- Strong understanding of software architecture, backend systems, cloud infrastructure, APIs, databases, networking, and DevOps.

- Experience managing technical roadmaps, budgets, hiring, vendors, and delivery.

- Experience working with international teams and globally distributed products.