Principal Software Engineer - Cinematics

Thought Pennies Entertainment is a Role-Playing Game studio creating games focused on social storytelling. We celebrate diversity and a people-first approach to game development. We are fully remote.

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Principal Software Engineers (PSE) are expected to internalize and help grow the architecture of all Thought Pennies game systems. They are proactive at shaping code through the course of development by understanding requirements and dealing in tradeoffs. With their high level of expertise, PSEs are generally expected to mentor more junior team members, perform code reviews, drive architecture discussions, and ensure a level of quality in the product as well as underlying systems. Each PSE is expected to have strong output and a high level of impact on studio technology .

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The Principal Software Engineer - Cinematics will typically report to the Technical Director and work closely with the studio’s story and narrative teams to deliver a world class cinematic tools, pipelines, and runtime implementations. The successful candidate is able to realize the narrative designer’s vision on screen with fast and reliable technology implementations. They are able to utilize their expertise to use all the systems Unreal Engine has to offer to create a pipeline that enables us to quickly generate high quality cinematic content.

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Responsibilities

• Contribute to all aspects of story telling and gameplay technology including writing, animation, and cinematic tools and pipelines.
• Translate Cinematic and Animation stories into actionable technical plans.
• Champion for highly efficient content authoring pipelines
• Own the performance footprint of the Cinematic and Narrative systems across various hardware platforms.
• Work with other teams and disciplines to ensure Narrative systems integrate cleanly with the rest of the game, particularly any procedural gameplay elements.

Requirements

• Experience with Unreal Engine development, preferably with one or more shipped titles on multiple platforms.
• Experience with Unreal Engine animation systems such as Sequencer, Anim Graph, and associated Blueprint and asset configurations
• Deep experience and interest with an aspect of game animation such as IK, rag doll, cloth simulation, facial animations states - overlays and blending, voice over synchronization, etc
• Experience creating tools for content creators within Unreal
• Familiarity with procedural and automated cinematic pipelines
• Deep understanding of animation asset organization and optimization to facilitate the development of a very large animation library
• Strong C++ and OO development experience.
• Outstanding communication skills.
• A commitment to excellence in the creation of world class games.
• A passion for RPGs and cinematic story telling.