Senior Narrative Systems Engineer

Who We Are

Founded in 2023, 2K Sports Lab is the newest stand alone studio at 2K looking to push game development boundaries to bring 2K's next groundbreaking sports franchise to life. We're building a world-class team at our new Vancouver, BC location where our goal is to deliver an exceptional experience through bold ideas, technical excellence, and creative collaboration. We're seeking passionate and driven professionals across all areas of game development to help shape this ambitious vision. If you’re interested in tackling unique challenges and think you have what it takes to level up our team, we encourage you to apply!

What We Need

We are seeking a highly qualified and creative Senior Gameplay Systems Engineer to architect and build our next-generation Cinematic and Narrative Tooling within the Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) framework. This pivotal role involves extending and customizing UE5's core systems to deliver emotionally resonant, high-quality, and deeply interactive story moments. The ideal candidate has a strong understanding of high-level engine features, possesses deep C++ experience, and has a passion for the art of digital storytelling.

What You’ll Do

• Own the Cinematic Pipeline: Develop, implement, and optimize authoring tools and runtime systems for our in-game cinematic sequences and scripted events, ensuring seamless transitions and high-performance playback.
• Sequencer Expertise: Extend and customize Unreal Engine's Sequencer tool to meet complex narrative and production needs.
• Advanced Camera Systems: Develop sophisticated, reusable, and customizable in-game Camera Systems for both gameplay and cinematic moments, including dynamic blending, procedural controls, and virtual cinematography tools.
• Facial Animation & Dialog Integration: Integrate and optimize Facial Animation Technology and Dialog Systems, ensuring narrative audio, lip-sync, and facial expressions are performant and highly synchronous with actor performance.
• Content Creator Empowerment: Work directly with the Animation, Narrative, and Level Design teams to improve their daily workflows, ensuring our tools are intuitive, stable, and highly productive.
• Performance and Stability: Profile and optimize cinematic and narrative code paths to maintain high frame rates and stability, especially under high-fidelity rendering conditions.

What Will Make You A Great Fit

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a focus on game development or interactive media.
• Expert-level experience using modern C++ and writing clean, modular, and performance-critical engine code.
• Deep, demonstrable experience with the Unreal Engine 4/5 source code, specifically within the Sequencer and general cinematic systems.
• Experience working with Procedural Animation Rigs, Branching Dialogue Systems and Localization workflows.
• Strong collaborative skills, with experience bridging the gap between technical constraints and creative direction.

Beneficial Qualifications

• Experience with rigging pipelines, skeletal mesh systems, or procedural animation technologies.
• Experience with state machines or behavior trees used for scripted events and scene logic.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating shipped titles or interactive projects delivering high-fidelity cinematic presentations.

The pay range for this position in British Columbia at the start of employment is expected to be between CAD $105,660 and CAD $142,720 per year. However, actual pay offered is based on market location and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations. If hired, the company reserves the right to modify base pay (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are provided  suitable accommodations to enjoy equal employment opportunities, including the ability to participate in the job application or interview process,. Please contact us if you need an accommodation as part of your application process or otherwise have questions about the Company’s accommodation policy and review process.

Please be aware that 2K does not conduct job interviews or make job offers over third-party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or others.  2K also does not engage in any financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process, and will never ask a candidate for their personal or financial information over an app or other unofficial chat channel.  Any attempt to do so may be the result of a scam or phishing attack, and you should not engage.  2K’s in-house recruitment team will only contact individuals through their official Company email addresses (i.e., via a 2k.com email domain).

#LI-Onsite 
#LI-Hybrid