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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The Principal Software Engineer - Cinematics will work closely with the entire technical team as well as the studio’s content and design teams to deliver a world class game experience. The successful candidate will work with these teams to derive technical requirements, to assist in debugging and evaluating existing systems, and to create new systems, as required. The PSE - Cinematics will also work closely with Production to deliver these systems in a timely way, at a high quality level.

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Principal Software Engineers are expected to internalize and help grow the architecture of all Thought Pennies game systems. They are constantly looking for ways to safeguard the quality of these systems and to improve their interaction at low, medium and high levels. Due to their level of expertise PSEs are generally expected to mentor more junior team members, as required, and to take a very active role in peer review activities. Each PSE is expected to maintain primary ownership of the systems that they design, and to take secondary ownership of other systems as required.

What you do

• 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.
• Architect and implement tools and systems in accord with these plans and in collaboration with these teams.
• Own the performance footprint of the Cinematic and Narrative systems across various hardware platforms.
• Work with other teams and disciplines to ensure these systems integrate cleanly with the rest of the game, particularly the procedural gameplay elements.

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What you bring

• Experience with Unreal Engine development, preferably with one or more shipped titles on multiple platforms.
• Extensive experience with all aspects of game animation including IK, rag doll, cloth simulation, facial animations states - overlays and blending, voice over synchronization, etc.
• Experience with Unreal Engine animation systems - Sequencer, AnimGraph, Blueprint setup etc.
• Deep understanding of animation asset organization and optimization to facilitate the development of a very large animation library, utilizing asset sharing as appropriate.
• Strong C++ and OO development experience.
• Experience with low level systems such as memory management and multi-threading.
• Outstanding communication skills.
• A commitment to excellence in the creation of world class games.

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Plus if you have it

• Experience working with external development teams supplying technology and/or content.
• Experience with more sophisticated animation techniques such as Motion Matching.
• A passion for RPGs and cinematic story telling.

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