Hire Remote Tools Programmers

Hire Tools Programmers Who Multiply Your Entire Team’s Productivity

The best Tools Programmer on a game team makes every other engineer, artist, and designer 20% more productive — and that leverage compounds. Custom level editors that eliminate friction from the design workflow. One-click build systems that replace 30-minute manual processes. In-editor debugging overlays that let designers tune AI behavior without reopening the IDE. The teams that ship great games on schedule are often the ones with great tools.

We match you with senior Tools Programmers who’ve built the internal editor tools, content pipelines, and developer experience systems that define how productive game teams can be. Engineers who understand both the technical requirements of the tools they build and the workflow needs of the designers, artists, and engineers who use them.

Start in days, not months. Pay 50% less than equivalent US-based tools engineering talent.

What Our Tools Programmers Build

Custom Editor Extensions & Plugins

Unity Editor (C#, IMGUI, UIElements) and Unreal Editor (C++, Slate UI, property customizations) extensions that add game-specific workflows — custom inspectors for complex game data, level editor tools for placing and configuring game-specific objects, and editor utilities that automate repetitive tasks designers currently do manually.

Level Design & World-Building Tools

Custom level editors for game-specific content types, procedural placement tools, in-editor preview systems that show designers what players will see in-game, and the one-click scene setup tools that eliminate the manual configuration steps that slow down content creation.

Asset Pipeline & Automation

Offline processing pipelines for game assets — automated import settings application, batch processing scripts, asset validation that catches problems before they reach builds, and the CI/CD-integrated pipeline that processes content changes automatically without manual intervention.

Debugging & Profiling Tools

In-game debug overlays for AI behavior, physics state, animation state machines, and network statistics. Custom profiling instrumentation that gives engineers game-specific performance context. Replay systems that capture and reproduce bugs without manual repro steps.

Build Systems & Deployment

Automated build pipelines, packaging scripts for each target platform, one-click deploy to QA or staging, and the build health monitoring that alerts teams to broken builds before they block other team members. Unity Cloud Build, Unreal Turnkey, and custom CI/CD integrations.

Tools Programming Technology Stack

Editor Frameworks: Unity Editor (IMGUI, UIElements, ScriptableObject), Unreal Editor (Slate, UMG in editor, Details Customization) Languages: C# (Unity tools), C++ (Unreal tools), Python (pipeline scripts), WPF/WinUI (standalone tools) Build Systems: Unity Cloud Build, Unreal Automation Tool, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, TeamCity Asset Pipeline: Addressables, Unreal Asset Bundler, custom importers, Perforce/Git LFS integration Debugging: Unity Debug overlay, Unreal Console, imgui (Dear ImGui), custom telemetry Standalone Tools: Electron, WPF, Qt, web-based tools (React) for cross-platform internal tools

Client Success Story: 40-Person Studio — Tools Investment Returns 3,400 Developer Hours/Year

A studio mid-development on a narrative adventure game was losing team time to manual, repetitive processes: designers were spending 2 hours daily configuring dialogue trees through Unity’s default Inspector, artists were manually applying import settings to every new asset, and QA was spending 4 hours per day on manual build packaging and distribution. Our Tools Programmer spent 3 months addressing the highest-impact bottlenecks: a custom dialogue editor (saving designers 1.5 hours/day), automated asset import settings based on folder convention (saving artists 45 minutes/day), and a one-click build distribution pipeline (saving QA 3 hours/day). Total team time saved annually: 3,400 developer hours — equivalent to 1.7 full-time engineers.

Client Success Story: Online Game Studio — Live Debug Tool Cuts Bug Repro Time 70%

An online game studio’s QA team was spending an average of 45 minutes per bug report reproducing the issue from a description — networking bugs and AI desyncs were often impossible to reproduce consistently. Our Tools Programmer built a lightweight in-game recording system: continuous ring-buffer capture of the last 5 minutes of game state (inputs, AI decisions, network messages), with one-keystroke save to a shareable replay file. QA could reproduce bugs from a button press, and engineers received exact repro steps from the captured state. Mean bug reproduction time dropped from 45 minutes to 14 minutes. The proportion of bugs marked “cannot reproduce” dropped from 23% to 4%.

Why Companies Choose Our Tools Programmers

• User empathy: They design for the designers and artists who use the tools — they prototype, get feedback, and iterate before full implementation
• Highest leverage investment: A single good tool can multiply productivity across 20+ team members — they understand where to invest for maximum impact
• Full stack tools skills: Engine editor extensions, standalone apps, web-based tools, and pipeline scripts — they build in whatever form the tool needs
• 50% cost savings: Senior tools engineering at a fraction of US market rates
• Fast start: Most engagements begin within 1–2 weeks

Engagement Models

• Individual Tools Programmer — One senior tools engineer addressing the highest-impact developer productivity bottlenecks in your pipeline.
• Tools + Pipeline Pod (2 engineers) — Tools programmer paired with a pipeline engineer for studios needing both editor tool development and content automation.
• Embedded Tools Team — Multiple tools engineers for large studios with ongoing developer experience investment requirements.
• Tools Audit & Roadmap — A fixed-scope engagement to audit your current tools, identify the highest-impact improvements, and produce a tools roadmap with time estimates.

How To Vet Tools Programmers

Our vetting identifies tools engineers who build for their users — not for their own engineering satisfaction.

1. Editor framework depth — Unity Editor API (SerializedObject, EditorWindow, PropertyDrawer) or Unreal Editor (Slate, Details Customization, Asset Editor framework). We test actual API knowledge, not just awareness. Over 80% of applicants do not pass this stage.
2. UX design discussion — How do they gather requirements from designers and artists? How do they prototype tools before full implementation? How do they handle conflicting requests from different user types?
3. Portfolio walkthrough — Walk us through a tool they built: the problem it solved, the workflow before and after, how they measured impact, and what they’d do differently.
4. Pipeline automation — Describe a content pipeline automation they’ve built. What triggered it? What did it process? How did it handle errors? What was the productivity impact?

What to Look for When Hiring Tools Programmers

Strong tools programmers are engineers with UX empathy — they build for users who aren’t them.

What strong candidates demonstrate:

• They talk about the tool user before they talk about the technical implementation
• They measure tool success in user productivity, not technical elegance
• They’ve shipped tools that designers and artists actually adopted — not tools that were technically good but unused
• They prototype and validate workflows before full implementation

Red flags to watch for:

• Builds tools based on what’s technically interesting, not what the team most needs
• No user research process — implements tools from engineering assumptions about user needs
• No productivity measurement — can’t say whether their tools improved team velocity
• “The tool works, they just need to learn it” — blames users when adoption fails

Interview questions that reveal real depth:

• “Walk me through how you’d design a custom level editor tool for a game with a specific mechanic (describe the mechanic). What does your discovery and design process look like before you write any code?”
• “Describe a tool you built that designers or artists actually adopted enthusiastically. What made the difference between adoption and rejection?”
• “How would you implement an automated asset validation pipeline that runs on every asset import and prevents malformed assets from entering the build? Walk me through the design.”

Related Services

• Engine Programmers — Core engine systems engineers whose infrastructure tools systems build on.
• Technical Artists — The power users of your tools who often drive the most specific tooling requirements.
• DevOps Engineers — Infrastructure engineers who manage the CI/CD systems tools programmers’ pipelines run on.
• Unity Developers — Senior Unity engineers for teams building tools within the Unity ecosystem.

Want to Hire Remote Tools Programmers?

We source, vet, and place senior Tools Programmers who build the editor tools, automation pipelines, and developer experience systems that multiply game team productivity — engineers who design for their users and measure success in hours saved per week across the team.

Get matched with Tools Programmers →

Ready to hire Tools Programmers who make your entire team more productive? Contact us today and we’ll introduce you to senior tools engineers within 48 hours.