Nexus Mods is recruiting a Senior Desktop Engineer (Linux Gaming) to build out Linux support in Vortex, its desktop mod manager, with SteamOS and the Steam Deck as the main targets. The position pays £65,000 to £75,000 a year. It is remote, but candidates must live in the UK, and the company says it cannot sponsor international visas. GamingOnLinux reported the opening on November 12 after the Nexus Mods team contacted the site about it.
Nexus Mods’ listing for the role, as GamingOnLinux published it, describes Vortex as Windows-first with Linux support on the roadmap. The listing says Vortex already runs on Linux but sits some way short of parity with the Windows version, and it traces most of the remaining problems to the Linux gaming stack: Wine and Proton, compatibility with game stores, and workarounds for individual games. The listing page could not be loaded to check that text independently.
The engineer would adapt Windows-first parts of the application, including file system handling, permissions, case sensitivity and running Windows modding tools under Proton, so they work reliably on Linux. The duties also cover game discovery and launching across Steam, other stores and third-party launchers, keeping game-specific fixes maintainable as the list grows, and Linux packaging in formats such as Flatpak or AppImage. According to the listing, the hire would triage Linux issues reported by players, diagnose faults using crash reports, telemetry and logs, and help set up a formal support process for Linux users. How far Proton reaches on Steam, and where it still breaks, is tracked in this Proton game compatibility breakdown.
The listing describes Vortex as an app used by more than a million people every month, with the Linux work spanning SteamOS, Steam hardware and desktop distributions. In January, Nexus Mods put the number of monthly Vortex users at over 1.4 million.
The opening follows a change of direction at the company earlier this year. In January, Nexus Mods stopped development of the Nexus Mods App, a newer open-source manager built to run on both Windows and Linux, and moved that team onto Vortex. Its post Why We’re Focusing on Vortex Going Forward said running two mod managers had divided the developers’ attention and duplicated both feature work and bug fixes. The same post said the company was looking into what Linux support for Vortex could involve, and cautioned that not every game and mod might work on Linux.
Later that month, Nexus Mods committed to supporting Vortex on SteamOS and named the Steam Deck and Steam Machine as the hardware it would target. It said other configurations would not be officially supported, though community developers were free to extend Vortex to other distributions because the project is open source. The new listing ties the role directly to that SteamOS commitment. SteamOS ships on Valve’s handheld, whose effect on Linux gaming numbers is covered in these Steam Deck Linux statistics.
Nexus Mods has not given a date for official SteamOS support, and the listing as published does not state an application deadline. In its January roadmap post, the company said it could not promise the work would arrive within weeks or months.
