For immersive builds that hold frame rate on real headsets
Hire AR/VR Developers
An immersive build can look impressive on a workstation while still dropping frame rate on the actual headset or triggering nausea within minutes of real use. These developers are tested on catching that exact gap. They are then placed to keep an experience comfortable and performant as it keeps evolving.
- Profiles typically within two business days
- Replacement Assurance: If an engineer is not the right fit, a replacement from our own team starts within ten business days of your request, at no extra cost
- You interview before placement if you want to
- At least four hours a day inside your core working hours. Two hours plus a daily written handover for the US West Coast
- 14-Day Risk-Free Trial: For your first engineer on a time-and-materials engagement. Up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for trial hours. Continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop
How we evaluate an AR/VR developer
The tasks, the signals and the onboarding, walked through by the people who run them.
90 secSample frame · video pending01Published, not promised
The assessment behind every developer we send.
The AR/VR bar is published, not assumed: five competencies, the exact task behind each, and the shortcut that ends a candidacy. Most interviews ask which engine someone prefers. This one asks whether a scene holds frame rate on the actual target headset.
What we listen forWhether they protect frame rate as a hard constraint, not a nice-to-have.
A VR scene renders beautifully on a development workstation but drops well below the headset's minimum frame rate once deployed. Diagnose and propose a fix.
- What strong sounds like
- Profiles the actual rendering bottleneck on target hardware and proposes cuts that protect the minimum frame rate as a non-negotiable constraint.
- What gives us pause
- Adds more visual detail to compensate for how the scene looks, without profiling why frame rate drops on the target headset.
Unity · Unreal Engine · OpenXR
ARKit · ARCore · WebXR
Hand Tracking SDKs · Spatial Anchors · Controller Input
Texture Compression · LOD Optimization · Draw Call Batching
02Who you actually meet
The bench, priced by seniority.
Three seniority tiers, priced honestly, and the engineers who fill each one today. Real names and photos take their place as soon as we can share them, and the standard stays exactly the same.
Engineer
Features scoped tightly enough to ship inside your review bar, every time.
The right first hire when your seniors already set the standard.
$2,100–2,800per month
Senior
The hard module nobody else wants to own, taken end to end.
Ownership of a surface, without adding a manager to your headcount.
$3,000–3,800per month
Lead
The workstream's decisions, made daily, so nothing waits on a meeting.
One accountable voice for a pod or initiative that can't afford to drift.
$4,100–5,200per month
AR/VR developer
3 yrs · US East overlap
Cut a scene's frame time in half after motion sickness reports started coming in from testers
- Unity
- Hand Tracking
- Asset Optimization
Senior AR/VR developer
6 yrs · UK + EU hours
Redesigned a spatial interaction pattern after users kept missing a control that felt natural on paper
- Unreal Engine
- WebXR
- Comfort Design
Lead AR/VR architect
9 yrs · EU + US split
Owns the cross-platform rendering standard applied across headset and WebXR builds of the same app
- Architecture
- Spatial Interaction Design
- Performance Profiling
Indicative ranges, representative profiles. Exact figures and named engineers arrive with your shortlist.
Weighing this against a freelancer, a direct hire or a marketplace? See the honest comparison
03From stated problem to first change
Four steps, each closing on evidence.
This sequence tests judgement about real hardware constraints, not familiarity with one engine's menus. Stopping at any point along the way owes us nothing.
Define the experience problem
We map where your build is actually slow, nauseating or hard to interact with. The brief names that gap, not a list of engine features to know.
A brief your product lead signsMatch against your target hardware
Candidates are screened against your actual headset, engine and platform mix. Three developers who understand your hardware beat thirty who list an engine on a CV.
Three fits, not thirty CVsAssess on the real tasks
Your team can watch the frame-rate and comfort-design exercises directly. What shows up is judgement about real hardware, not a rehearsed engine demo.
Evaluation you can watchOnboard inside your project
Access, standards and a first bounded performance fix shipped for real. Continuity cover keeps a departure from stalling a build mid-tune.
A profiled build in week one
04Evidence and proof
Developers who made an immersive build actually comfortable to use.
AR/VR proof is a build that held frame rate on real hardware, not a smooth clip recorded on a workstation. Every record here waits for written client approval before production.
Explore case studies
A locomotion redesign that stopped making testers feel sick.
Pillar Learning's VR training module was making testers nauseated within minutes of the smooth-camera locomotion feature reaching them. An embedded AR/VR developer redesigned locomotion around a comfort-first teleportation pattern instead.
- Tester-reported nausea
- Eliminated
- Locomotion pattern
- Comfort-first teleportation
She profiled our scene against the actual headset and found the bottleneck nobody could see on a workstation.
Sample · pending client approval
She rebuilt our spatial menu around hand tracking instead of the flat mobile layout we had shipped by mistake.
Sample · pending client approval
05Three shapes, one standard
Add a developer, an experience pod, or a practice.
Most teams start with one developer fixing performance or comfort issues first. Some need a pod that owns rendering and interaction design end to end. Where a whole immersive product matters more than one seat, we point you to the practice instead.
- Team extension
One named developer
A single AR/VR specialist inside your direction and your review process. The smallest commitment, and the natural first step.
- Delivery pods
An experience pod
A pod with its own lead that owns rendering performance, comfort and interaction design end to end. You set priorities while the pod carries delivery.
- Product Engineering
The practice, not the person
Immersive builds here sit inside the wider product engineering practice, so when a whole product matters more than one seat, that practice takes it on instead.
06Straight answers
Asked before an AR/VR hire is signed.
01What does an AR/VR developer actually do day to day?
Profiles rendering performance against the target headset, designs locomotion and interaction around comfort, and tunes assets that drag frame rate down. Protecting the minimum frame rate as a hard constraint runs through nearly all of it.
02Do you hire for a specific headset or engine?
Matched to your actual platform. Frame-rate and comfort judgement transfers across Unity, Unreal and the major headsets, then the evaluation confirms fluency with whichever you run.
03Can we run our own interviews as well?
Yes, the published tasks are built to be reused directly. Several clients now run the comfort-design exercise themselves in later hiring rounds.
04How fast can an AR/VR developer start?
A shortlist arrives within days from a bench evaluated continuously. Actual start speed after that depends on how quickly your side can grant project and build access.
05Who manages the engineer day to day?
Your product lead sets experience priorities and signs off on design direction. We take on the employment relationship, handling payroll and covering continuity when plans shift.
06What if the engineer is not the right fit?
Say so before the first month closes and we cover the replacement in full. Whatever the gap was becomes part of the brief for the developer who follows.
07Do your AR/VR developers use AI tools?
Yes, to draft first-pass shader code and interaction scaffolding quickly. The developer still owns every frame-rate tradeoff and comfort decision that ships to the headset.
08How does pricing work for a hired AR/VR developer?
The range above is a planning guide; the shortlist settles the actual number once the scope is agreed. Monthly billing, no placement fee, notice-period exit only.