About this role
Engineering Manager
Hamburg Sunday Tech Full time
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Sunday creates pocket-sized friends for the mass market. We turn idle moments into meaningful connections for millions of users worldwide.
Sunday focuses on the psychology of care, companionship, and empathy. We build accessible worlds where players don’t just solve puzzles, they rescue friends. By combining mass-market accessibility with deep emotional hooks, we are defining the next era of digital entertainment.
As Engineering Manager, you will lead Sunday’s engineering team of approximately ten engineers across Unity game development and SDK. The position reports to the Director of Operations and works in close partnership with Production, Product, and Growth.
The role combines people leadership with technical ownership. Your primary responsibility is to lead and develop the team and to define how engineering operates. At the same time, you remain close enough to the code to own architectural decisions, review critical work and contribute directly where this supports delivery.
Our team delivers frequent releases across a portfolio of live games. We are looking for a leader who understands the trade-offs between quality, time and budget in the context of business priorities, and who translates them into sound technical decisions and the management of the team. This includes making our delivery pace sustainable through stable releases, a well-maintained codebase and engineering practices that scale with the business. The role carries a clear mandate to shape how engineering works at Sunday.
What you will own
People leadership: development plans, performance conversations against clear role expectations, hiring and onboarding. You hold conversations early and directly.
Engineering ways of working: code review standards, quality gates before release, build and release pipeline, and a deliberate plan to reduce hotfixes and technical debt.
Architecture and platform: owning the technical foundations shared across our games, including our in house SDK, analytics tracking, live configuration and the setup of A/B tests.
Delivery partnership: working with the producers who lead our cross functional game teams on estimates, capacity and technical risk, and having the final say on whether a release is technically ready to ship.
Transparency: making engineering progress, quality and capacity visible to the rest of the company through clear, measurable indicators.
What you bring
At least four years managing an engineering team of five or more people, including performance management and hiring.
A strong engineering background of your own, ideally in C#, Unity or mobile development, so you can lead architecture and review decisions with credibility.
A proven track record of success in a commercially driven company operating live products with real users, where engineering decisions are made against business priorities.
A track record of raising quality and delivery predictability in a small or fast moving company, with concrete examples of what you changed and how you measured it.
Comfort with direct conversations and with holding people to clear standards: Open, respectful, goal orientated.
A pragmatic, data driven approach: you decide based on what the numbers show, and you introduce the process only where it pays back.
Strong plus
Experience in frequent shipping of mobile games, ideally free to play, casual or hybrid casual titles.
Hands on knowledge of ad monetisation and mediation SDKs, mobile measurement partners and A/B testing infrastructure.
Experience introducing CI/CD, automated testing or release quality gates in a game studio.
Fuel for the Journey: Benefits to Support Your Ambitions
Invest in Your Future: Regular feedback and our development program support your growth, helping you expand your skill set and achieve your career goals.
Easy Arrival to Sunday: From signing to settling in Hamburg, we’ve got you covered. Need a visa? No problem. Ready to build your new life and career at applike in Hamburg? We support every ambition – from learning German to a relocation bonus that helps you settle in and make Hamburg feel like home.
Live Your Best Life, at Work and Beyond: We work in a hybrid setup with 3 core office days, plus flexible working hours. Enjoy 30 vacation days, 3 weeks of remote work per year, and free access to an in-house gym with lots of different fitness classes and mental health support through our Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
Thrive Where You Work: Enjoy the Alster Lake view from our central office with top-notch equipment, fun open spaces, and a large variety of snacks and drinks.
Join the Community! Participate in regular team and company events, including hackathons and social gatherings. We work together, and we celebrate together, too.
If you want to build the future of digital companionship, Sunday is your home. Apply now!
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Tips & Tricks to Nail Your Interviews!
Skip cover letters
Since we want to keep everything fast and easy for you, we don’t want you to waste time on a cover letter – we would rather take a look at your CV and if it’s a match, we directly invite you to a first call.
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Check your equipment
Test your internet connection, camera, mic, and speakers beforehand. Time for each interview is limited, and we’d like to spend as much of it as possible on getting to know each other. If the interview is online, always have your camera on! It’s way easier to create a meaningful interaction if we also see each other.
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Do some research
We will give you all the information about the role & company’s culture, but it’s always nice to see how you perceive us after doing some online detective work. 😉
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Prepare an elevator pitch
We will certainly ask you to briefly summarize your work experiences in a short overview. Think of what you’re going to say beforehand so you can fit all of the essential information in 2-3 minutes. Keep the goal of the interview in mind, and make sure everything you say is relevant to the position you’re applying for.
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Structure your answers
Be specific, but don’t get caught up in details – following the STAR method can help you: Situation (set the scene and give the necessary details of your example) – Task (describe what your responsibility was in that situation) – Action (explain exactly what steps you took to address it) – Result (share what outcomes your actions achieved).
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Let your personality shine
It is a recruiting process, but this doesn’t mean you can’t loosen up and showcase your personality. We are looking for an authentic character and we are open to having some small talk or a funny joke thrown into the mix. This might even show us that you’re a good cultural fit. Remember, next to all our ambition we like to have fun!
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Come with your questions
At the end of the interview, we will ask you whether you have any questions for us. Use this time to get answers to all your questions or clear out any curiosities. Always have two or three questions prepared, whether about the position specifically or about career development, upcoming projects, or company culture.
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Don’t be afraid of rescheduling
Even if you’ve already scheduled an interview, urgent things might pop up in your schedule or you might not feel fit to attend the interview. We are