Lead Gameplay Engine Programmer

Job Description

ENGINEERING

What We Do

Unreal projects have been leading the pack of real-time entertainment with our constantly growing team of engineering experts. We're always improving on the tools and technology that empower content developers worldwide.

What You'll Do

We're looking for a Lead Gameplay Engine Programmer to lead a team who will build the systems that Unreal Engine customers build their games on. You and your team will also be improving and supporting existing gameplay systems such as Blueprint, Gameplay Ability System, Enhanced Input, Game Features and Modular Gameplay plugins. You should have experience leading a team of programmers and setting them up for success.

You should have a broad knowledge of modern game engine technology, as well as a good sense of trade-offs between performance, memory usage, and ease-of-implementation. Additionally, you should have experience working closely with developers in all disciplines, not just other programmers. Your team's goal is to empower Unreal Engine users, including Fortnite, to make world-class experiences using the systems that you create, through close iteration with both our internal game teams and external engine customers.

In this role, you will
• Lead a team of world-class programmers and coordinate development of gameplay systems.
• Architect and guide gameplay system development to help Unreal Engine grow to fit the needs of current and future games and applications.
• Mentor and foster the professional development of your team.
• Scope and prioritize work in close collaboration with the team, making trade-offs when they're appropriate.
• Maintain long term feature roadmaps that align with Unreal Engine goals.
• Work closely with other teams, often across different projects, along with their leads and production to align feature work to help everyone succeed.
• Work with artists, animators, and designers to understand their needs when designing and developing engine systems.
• Optimize both memory and performance in systems that have to scale from high-end to mobile systems.
• Analyze and fix common problems in a game engine such as load times, memory usage, and performance problems.
• Be a go-to expert resource for supporting gameplay systems in internal projects such as Fortnite.
• Support external Unreal Engine customers by answering their requests and questions about gameplay systems.
• Bug fix and maintain the Unreal Engine 5 code base.

What we're looking for
• Someone with excellent leadership skills, including mentoring your team, planning technical roadmaps, making trade-offs, and prioritization.
• Excellent C++ skills, with a familiarity of scripting systems like Blueprint, Lua, Python, etc.
• Experience in a broad range of programming areas on shipping games or real-time visualization systems, with special attention given to low-level code and deep optimization.
• Well-versed in software engineering principles, especially API design.
• Experience in a cross-disciplinary development environment, with excellent cross-discipline communication skills. You should be able to communicate and explain trade-offs with non-programmers!
• Familiarity with an existing game engine with an understanding of game engine and editor concepts.
• Familiarity with development tools and profiling on modern systems, including PC, console, and mobile.
• Experience developing in a large codebase at a fast pace, making trade-offs between usability, performance, and power.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate fluently in English (written and verbal).
• You're user-focused, passionate, scrappy, solutions-focused, and innovative. These traits equal success at Epic and influence everything we do.

Note to Recruitment Agencies: Epic does not accept any unsolicited resumes or approaches from any unauthorized third party (including recruitment or placement agencies) (i.e., a third party with whom we do not have a negotiated and validly executed agreement). We will not pay any fees to any unauthorized third party. Further details on these matters can be found here.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-rebqo7-18-118-210-213-42 in your application.