Senior Narrative Systems Engineer

About the role

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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Benefits

Your Match

How well this role fits your profile.

Company Intel

What employees say

Worked at 2k? Share your experience