Job hunting ate my days.
So I built what hunts for me.
Second Run reads every game-industry posting it can reach, judges each one against criteria you write in your own words, and pings you only when one clears your bar. No board to scroll, no feed to check.
Gameplay Engineer II
Senior Gameplay Engineer
Gameplay Programmer
Closed beta, invite by waitlist. No card required to join.
From Tiny Bull Studios to my own job hunt
- 9 yrsat Tiny Bull Studios — Unity engineer, then Technical Art Director
- 2025shipped The Lonesome Guild with Don't Nod
- 40 → 15the layoffs that ended my first run
I'm Ruben Caliandro. For nine years I worked at Tiny Bull Studios in Turin, first as a Unity engineer, later as Technical Art Director. The last five went into The Lonesome Guild, an action-RPG we shipped with Don't Nod in 2025. Players love it — 96% positive on Steam — and it won the Best Italian Game Award a year later.
It still didn't sell enough. Not long after release the studio went through mass layoffs, shrinking from forty people to fifteen, and I left soon after. A couple of months later I started my own job search — and lost whole afternoons to it, one posting at a time.
Being the kind of engineer who automates the thing rather than doing it by hand, I built a small tool to run it for me: it read postings, checked them against criteria I wrote out for myself, and told me which ones were actually worth my time. I was its first user, months before it was anyone else's.
Second Run is that tool, rebuilt properly. If you're a game developer looking right now, I built it out of the same need you have, in the same industry, and I'm offering it to you because I wish someone had handed it to me.
I didn't need more postings.
I needed them to be judged.
So I taught a tool to do the judging: read the brief I'd written in my own words, weigh every posting against it, and hand me a verdict. Now it does that with yours.
- 01My brief, in my words
I wrote my deal-breakers the way I'd say them out loud, not the way a dropdown wants them. You write yours the same way.
remote from Italymustpermanent contractshouldno gambling, no cryptocould - 02It speaks games
Nine years inside a studio taught me what a posting actually says — and what it leaves out. I taught it the same reading. A generic tool can't do that.
- …thrives in a fast-paced environment and wears many hats…crunch, probably
- …real-time effects in Niagara for a live game…VFX, Unreal
- …looking for an Engineer II to join the combat team…mid-level, not senior
- …sculpting in ZBrush, cloth in Marvelous Designer…character art
- …remote-friendly, with the team based in Guildford…office first
- 03Early, while it counts
Studios read applications in arrival order and are flooded within days — I learned that by being late more than once. It finds postings while they're still fresh, before the flood arrives.
Six, nine or even twelve thousand applicants. Within 48 hours.
A games recruiter, Aftermath, 2025There were 127,000 seekers and just 12,000 hires. That is 11 to 1.
Amir Satvat, on North America, 2026
Turn your job hunt into a co-op campaign.
Your moves on the left, Second Run's on the right.
- You01Brief
Hand Second Run your CV and your criteria: the role, what matters most, and your deal-breakers.
- Second Run02Hunt
It never stops looking: job boards, studio careers pages, every game-industry source it can reach.
- Second Run03Judge
Each posting is checked against your brief. Miss one must-have and it's out before you ever read it; what passes gets a score.
- Second Run04Ping
When one clears the bar you get a message on your phone: the score, what it met, what it missed, and why.
- You05Review & tune
Browse everything it found — what it held back, and why. Tweak your brief and the whole set is re-judged on the spot.
Questions I'd ask too.
Why should I trust a tool built by one person?
Because I used it on myself first, months before offering it to anyone else. It's the same tool, not a demo built to look good — the story above is how it came to exist.
Is this just another job board?
No. A board competes on how many listings it shows you; this competes on judging each one against criteria you actually wrote. I built it because the boards were the problem.
Is it only for games?
Yes, deliberately. It's tuned to game-industry studios, engines, and hiring quirks, because that's the industry I know.
Which disciplines?
Any game-industry role. I'm an engineer, but it judges against your brief, not my job title: art, design, production, audio and QA all work the same way.
Where does it look?
Job boards, studio careers pages, and whatever game-industry sources it can reach — the same tabs I had open every morning. What sits behind a login it can't read. Each alert says where the posting came from.
How fast will I hear about a posting?
As soon as it has found and judged it — it checks continuously, not once a week. I won't promise a number of days, and a posting it can't reach, it can't see.
What if it gets something wrong?
It shows its work: the score and the verdict on every criterion, so you can see exactly why and tell it so with one tap. A shaky verdict is shown as shaky — I'd rather it admit doubt than dress it up.
Will it get me hired?
No, and I won't pretend otherwise. It finds and judges roles; applying, interviewing and getting the job are still yours. What it saved me was the searching, not the interviews.
Am I the only one seeing these leads?
No. Anyone with a similar brief sees overlapping leads — there's no exclusivity to sell, and I won't invent one. The edge is being early, and being judged on your own brief.
What happens to my CV?
It's read to build your brief and kept to judge postings against you. I never sell it, trade it, or hand it to a third party; the one exception is the AI that runs the hunt, which reads it for that purpose only. No studio ever sees it.
What will it cost?
I haven't set a price yet — first I need to see what it actually costs me to run. It costs me compute, not a sales team, so it won't need SaaS pricing to make sense. While it's in beta it's free — I'm covering that cost myself — and when it launches as a real product, the price will be a straightforward subscription.
Which apps does it message?
Telegram at launch — it's where I wanted my own alerts, and the one I could get right first. Discord support is planned. If neither works for you, email is the fallback.