Lead Animation Programmer - remote

Location: Remote-first

Type: Full-time

Start: ASAP

In a world where fantasy and ancient technology intertwine, players explore shattered realms, grapple across verticality, solve puzzles, and push back corruption, with progression driven by player expression and discovery. We’re developing in Unreal Engine, in early production, with a team spanning multiple countries. We’re remote-first, based in the UK, and scaling to support a multi-year live-service roadmap. We value autonomy, curiosity, and collaborative ownership, and we’re looking for creators who want to help build something from the ground up.

The systems that define how players interact with the world, each other, and the game’s core mechanics are built by gameplay engineers. We need a Lead Gameplay Developer who can own the technical implementation of our core gameplay systems and build the engineering team that delivers them.

You will make technical design decisions, stay hands-on with implementation, and represent the gameplay engineering discipline across the studio in production planning, design reviews, and resourcing decisions. You will be making foundational technical decisions that define how the game feels, scales, and evolves over years of live service.

Manage a growing team of gameplay engineers as the team scales through production: set priorities, assign work, balance workload, and run regular 1:1s focused on progress, career development, and honest feedback. Lead performance reviews and goal setting aligned to production milestones and individual development plans. Identify skill gaps and address them through coaching, stretch assignments, or training. Represent the gameplay engineering discipline in cross-discipline leads meetings, production planning, and resourcing conversations.

Own the technical design and implementation of core gameplay systems in Unreal Engine 5, including combat, traversal, abilities, player interaction, and progression mechanics. Architect gameplay systems for a persistent MMO context: server-authoritative logic, client prediction, ability replication, and state synchronisation across distributed server infrastructure. Collaborate closely with game design and level design to translate design intent into robust, tuneable, and extensible gameplay code. Stay hands-on with C++ and Blueprint implementation. Build, profile, and iterate alongside your engineers, establishing technical quality benchmarks and code architecture patterns. Work with animation, VFX, and audio teams to integrate gameplay systems with presentation layers: ability visuals, hit feedback, audio cues, and UI responses.

Define coding standards, architecture patterns, and review processes for gameplay code. Profile and optimise gameplay systems for MMO-scale performance: tick budgets, replication bandwidth, ability processing in dense combat scenarios, and memory management. Collaborate with online services and network engineering to ensure gameplay systems work reliably under real-world latency and server load conditions. Contribute to milestone planning, sprint scoping, and capacity forecasting. Use playtesting observations and telemetry data to identify technical issues with gameplay feel, responsiveness, and fairness.

• Proven experience in game development, with at least one shipped title in a gameplay engineering or gameplay lead role.
• Proven experience of direct people management: running 1:1s, setting goals, conducting performance reviews, and developing team members.
• Strong C++ proficiency with production experience in Unreal Engine, including Gameplay Ability System, replication, and Blueprint integration.
• Experience building gameplay systems for multiplayer or online games, with a working understanding of server authority, client prediction, and state replication.
• Demonstrated ability to translate game design concepts into well-architected, extensible, and performant code.
• Strong communication and documentation skills, with proven experience collaborating across disciplines (design, art, animation, audio, network) to ship integrated gameplay features.
• Experience shipping at least one MMO or persistent online world from production through live service.
• Experience with Unreal Engine’s Gameplay Ability System (GAS) at scale, including custom ability tasks, gameplay effects, and attribute sets.
• Familiarity with AI systems for NPC behaviour, encounter scripting, or enemy design.
• Experience with data-driven design approaches where designers author gameplay content through configuration rather than code changes.
• Exposure to anti-cheat considerations and exploit mitigation in competitive or economy-driven multiplayer games.
• Frame data, input responsiveness, and gameplay feel matter to you.
• You work autonomously in a remote environment, proactively keeping your team aligned and your stakeholders informed.

We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender identity or expression, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic.

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