Senior Unreal Engine Programmer (Gamedev)

SENIOR UNREAL ENGINE PROGRAMMER (JOYDROP)

🕹 AAA Games
🧠 Senior
💰 Negotiable
⏰ Full-time / Contract
🌎 Remote EST ±3 hours

🦄 Description
Joydrop is a boutique Triple-I co-development studio supporting well-known game projects. The company is hiring experienced Unreal Engine programmers for several intermediate and senior positions across multiple projects, with both permanent employment and six-month contracts available.

In this role, you will own platform-level systems in a shared Unreal Engine codebase, improve performance and stability, resolve complex technical issues, and support console-first live service development.

🚀 Responsibilities
• Own and develop platform-level systems in a shared Unreal Engine codebase
• Diagnose and resolve memory corruption, race conditions, non-reproducible issues, and other complex bugs
• Identify and implement CPU, memory, and input-output performance optimizations
• Build and improve internal profiling, package management, and automation tools
• Support release management, game stability, and live service updates
• Collaborate with gameplay, engine, build, and platform teams
• Improve maintainability and reliability across shared systems
• Reduce hard-to-reproduce defects through systematic debugging and diagnostics

📚 Required Skills
• At least 5 years of experience in AAA game development
• At least 10 years of professional C++ experience
• Strong C++ expertise in large shared codebases
• Professional experience with Unreal Engine 4 or newer
• Proven experience shipping and maintaining persistent live game services
• Console development experience
• Understanding of console certification, performance requirements, and platform constraints
• Experience with release pipelines and stability ownership
• Strong debugging skills in low-visibility and non-reproducible scenarios
• Strong system design and software architecture fundamentals
• Ability to work independently while collaborating within a shared code ownership environment
• Ability to deliver measurable performance and stability improvements quickly
• Experience using Claude Code or similar AI-assisted programming tools

👍 Nice to Have
• At least 10 years of experience in AAA game development
• Experience with Unreal Engine 3
• Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2 development experience
• Experience with Backtrace or similar crash aggregation tools
• Experience with low-level graphics programming and rendering
• Familiarity with Unreal Game Sync
• Familiarity with Horde
• Familiarity with Gauntlet
• Experience with embedded scripting languages
• Interest in applying artificial intelligence to development workflows

🍪 What we offer
• Permanent and six-month contract opportunities
• Fully remote work within three hours of the EST time zone
• Full-time employment
• Work on well-known AAA game projects
• Highly collaborative environment with shared code ownership
• Focus on performance, diagnostics, stability, and maintainability
• Opportunity to work on console-first live service projects
• Collaboration with experienced gameplay, engine, build, and platform teams

🌐

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