Lead Software Engineer, Tactical Shooter (Unreal Engine 5)

• Lead the technical direction and implementation of core gameplay and runtime systems for a third person tactical shooter in Unreal Engine 5.
• Own the architecture and long-term health of gameplay-adjacent systems including AI support, combat frameworks, traversal, movement, navigation, encounter scripting support, and systemic runtime features.
• Partner closely with design, animation, technical design, and content teams to build responsive, maintainable systems that support tactical combat, squad behaviors, player control fidelity, and encounter scalability.
• Drive engineering quality across gameplay code, emphasizing performance, maintainability, extensibility, and production-readiness.
• Architect and optimize systems related to AI movement, perception, decision support, tactical positioning, spatial queries, pathfinding integration, and dynamic navigation behavior.
• Support large and complex gameplay spaces by improving runtime performance, memory use, system reliability, and frame-time stability across a wide range of PC hardware configurations.
• Establish engineering best practices for Unreal Engine 5 development, including code review standards, debugging workflows, profiling habits, and technical planning.
• Collaborate with technical leadership to break down risks, define implementation strategies, and align engineering execution with project goals and production timelines.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, hands-on problem solving, and day-to-day technical guidance. Contribute to hiring, onboarding, and raising the overall quality bar of the team.
• Communicate clearly with stakeholders about technical constraints, trade-offs, dependencies, and execution plans.

• Have 5+ years of professional game development experience, with demonstrated technical leadership through project ownership, mentorship, and setting engineering standards.
• Have strong professional experience with C++ and Unreal Engine, including gameplay architecture, runtime systems, debugging, and optimization.
• Have shipped or significantly contributed to the development of complex action, shooter, AI-heavy, or systemic gameplay features in a production environment.
• Have deep experience building and maintaining gameplay systems that are responsive, scalable, and designer-friendly.
• Understand the technical demands of third person action or tactical shooter gameplay, including movement responsiveness, encounter complexity, AI coordination, combat readability, and runtime performance.
• Are comfortable working across systems boundaries, collaborating with multiple disciplines, and balancing short-term production needs with long-term technical health.
• Bring a strong ownership mindset, practical decision-making, and a focus on helping teams move effectively under production constraints.

• Experience building third person shooter, tactical combat, or AI-driven gameplay systems.
• Strong understanding of navigation systems, pathfinding, spatial reasoning, and runtime query performance.
• Experience integrating or working with pathfinding middleware such as Mercuna.
• Familiarity with navmesh generation, dynamic navigation updates, hierarchical pathfinding, flow fields, cover queries, tactical positioning systems, or related navigation algorithms.
• Experience supporting AI at scale, including movement through complex environments, multi-agent coordination, and performance optimization for simulation-heavy gameplay.
• Experience with Unreal Engine 5 systems relevant to gameplay and AI, such as Behavior Trees, EQS, AI Controllers, Character Movement, Gameplay Ability System, animation integration, and network-aware gameplay architecture.
• Experience profiling and optimizing CPU-heavy gameplay and AI systems on PC.

Blackbird Interactive