Senior Unreal Engine Networking Engineer

About the role

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

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

• 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.