Senior Unreal Engine Networking Engineer

About the role

Please apply via our recruitment agency 8bit. By applying you agree for your data to be processed by 8Bit for the purposes of this recruitment. We're looking for a Senior level Networking Engineer to build co-op multiplayer for our next factory game in Unreal Engine 5. Co-op sits on top of a large, deterministic factory simulation. Replication has to deal with hundreds of thousands of machines, not just a handful of characters.

You'll join a new game team as one of its first engineers, working closely with the Principal C++ Engineer and the Engineering Team Lead.

We're open to two setups: a 6 to 12 month freelance contract focused on networking, or a permanent role where networking is your speciality and you work as a generalist the rest of the time.

Your responsibilities

• Design and build co-op networking for the game, from session flow to replication
• Work with the Principal C++ Engineer so the sim stays in sync between players, without flooding bandwidth or introducing excessive delays
• Profile and fix network performance, latency, and desync issues
• Set up tooling to test multiplayer early and often
• Document and train the team in the networking model, so that Engineers and Designers can build features on it

About you

You will likely have:

• 1+ shipped title where you worked on networking in Unreal Engine 4 or 5, in C++
• Hands-on experience with Unreal's replication system (including replication graph, dormancy), RPCs, and network relevancy
• Good judgement on what goes through Unreal replication and what the deterministic sim handles
• Experience with deterministic lockstep or input-based networking, or you can show how you would approach it

In addition, you may have:

• Experience with Steam networking or online subsystems
• Experience shipping co-op in a building, survival or factory game
• Experimented with the new UE replication system, Iris
• For the permanent role: broad Unreal experience outside networking

If you match most of this and the problem excites you, please apply.

What we offer

• Fully Remote: We employ directly inside Germany
• Flexible working hours!
• Paid overtime, on the rare occasions it happens
• A hardware budget to ensure you have the ergonomic setup and hardware you need to work comfortably
• A monthly personal growth allowance for courses, books or other learning material
• Focus days to research or learn new skills
• A yearly team gathering to meet and collaborate in person
• A yearly salary review to keep your pay in line with the market, and an automatic increase of 2% per year

Next Steps & How to Apply

Please apply via our recruitment agency 8bit.

• A one-hour technical conversation with the Engineering Team Lead about work you have done
• A one-hour meeting with our HR and either our Founder/CEO or our Studio Producer, depending on availability, to assess shared values, how we will work together, and culture add
• A second technical round in a format we pick together, based on what we need to assess for the specific role, taking no more than 2-3 hours of your time in total
• A casual, unscored conversation with a group of people you'll be working with closely to learn more about us and for the team to learn more about you
• An offer call

We give you a decision within a few working days of each stage, and we aim for the whole process from the first interview to an offer to take four weeks or less.

For this role:

• The first technical conversation covers networking you've shipped and how you would network ours
• For the second technical round, we decide together on one of:
  • A whiteboarding session where we design together how co-op stays in sync with the factory simulation
  • A walkthrough of networking code you built, in code you are able to show us

We are happy to discuss any requested accommodation to the above process.