{"id":177001,"url":"https://alion.io/job/2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems","title":"Principal Software Engineer, Narrative Systems","company":{"id":46865,"name":"2K","domain":"2k.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/2k-games","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":89,"open_postings":25,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.24,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":89,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Burnaby, Canada"],"countries":["CA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":144200,"max":213375,"currency":"CAD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":149741},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Unreal Engine","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-14T19:14:31Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T21:41:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":64,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":64},"description":"Who We Are\nFounded in 2023, Small Axe Studios is 2K’s newest stand-alone studio, built to push the boundaries of game development and bring 2K’s next groundbreaking sports franchise to life. Headquartered in Burnaby, we are assembling a world-class team of visionaries, builders, and passionate gamers who thrive on creative collaboration, technical excellence, and bold ideas. At Small Axe Studios, we believe big things start with sharp focus-and we’re crafting an exceptional, player-first experience from the ground up. If you’re ready to tackle unique challenges, leave your mark on a brand-new IP, and help shape the future of interactive sports entertainment, we want you on our team!\nWhat We Need\nWe are looking for a Principal Software Engineer, Narrative Systems to own and lead the development of cinematic, narrative, and storytelling technology for our game. In this role, you will partner closely with Design, Animation, Audio and Production to define the technical foundation for emotionally resonant, high-quality, and deeply interactive story moments built in Unreal Engine 5.\nYou will help establish the architecture for our narrative systems, including cinematic sequencing, scripted events, dialog integration, camera behavior, facial animation workflows, and creator-facing tools. This is a highly collaborative technical leadership role for someone who can move fluidly between engine-level C++ development, content pipeline design, runtime systems, and creative production needs.\nThe ideal candidate has deep Unreal Engine experience, strong technical judgment, a passion for interactive storytelling, and the ability to lead complex systems from early research through production, polish, and ship.\nWhat You Will Do:\nOwn and lead the development of narrative systems for the game, including runtime technology, authoring workflows, tool integrations, and long-term technical direction.\nArchitect, develop, and maintain cinematic and narrative systems in Unreal Engine 5 that support high-quality story moments, scripted events, branching content, and interactive presentation.\nExtend and customize Unreal Engine systems such as Sequencer, camera frameworks, animation playback, dialog integration, and event-driven scene logic to meet the needs of a large-scale production.\nPartner with Animation, Audio, Level Design, and Gameplay teams to translate creative goals into robust, scalable technical solutions.\nLead the integration of dialog, facial animation, lip-sync, localization, and performance-driven content into reliable and performant runtime systems.\nDefine technical standards and best practices for narrative content creation, cinematic playback, scripted events, and tool development.\nIdentify opportunities to improve content creator workflows, reduce iteration time, and increase the quality and reliability of narrative production.\nResearch and evaluate new Unreal Engine features, industry techniques, and emerging technologies that could improve our narrative, cinematic, and storytelling toolset.\nMentor engineers on system design, Unreal Engine development, C++ programming practices, debugging strategies, and production-quality engineering.\nProfile, optimize, and debug narrative, cinematic, camera, dialog, and animation-related systems to ensure stable performance under demanding production conditions.\nWhat Will Make You a Great Fit:\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.\n15+ years of professional software engineering experience in games, interactive media, simulation, or related real-time technology.\nAdvanced expertise with modern C++ and experience writing clean, maintainable, performance-conscious engine-level code.\nDeep experience developing within Unreal Engine 4 or Unreal Engine 5, with strong familiarity with engine architecture and source-level workflows.\nDemonstrated experience owning complex runtime systems, content creation tools, or production pipelines from initial architecture through delivery.\nStrong understanding of cinematic, narrative, animation, camera, dialog, or scripted event systems in a real-time engine.\nAbility to work closely with creative teams and translate ambiguous artistic, narrative, or design goals into practical technical solutions.\nAbility to explain complex technical concepts to people with varying levels of technical expertise.\nStrong debugging, profiling, and optimization skills.\nDedicated and self-motivated, with the ability to identify areas for research, development, improvement, and technical risk reduction.\nA strong product sense for interactive storytelling, cinematic presentation, and emotionally engaging player experiences.\nLove for video games and an interest in how narrative, presentation, and interactivity combine to create memorable moments.\nBeneficial Qualifications:\nExperience developing and shipping high-quality games on Unreal Engine 4 or Unreal Engine 5.\nExperience with branching dialog systems, localization workflows, narrative scripting systems, quest systems, or event-driven scene logic.\nExperience with Unreal Sequencer, MovieScene, Control Rig, animation blueprints, skeletal mesh systems, or procedural animation technologies.\nExperience developing editor tools or content pipelines for Narrative, Cinematics, Animation, Audio, or Level Design teams.\nExperience with facial animation pipelines, lip-sync systems, performance capture, MetaHuman, or other character performance technologies.\nA strong portfolio or shipped-title history demonstrating high-quality cinematic, narrative, or interactive presentation systems.\nThe pay range for this position in British Columbia at the start of employment is expected to be between CAD $144,200 and CAD $213,375 per year. However, actual pay offered is based on market location and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations. If hired, the company reserves the right to modify base pay (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.\nAs an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are provided suitable accommodations to enjoy equal employment opportunities, including the ability to participate in the job application or interview process. Please contact us if you need an accommodation as part of your application process or otherwise have questions about the Company’s accommodation policy and review process.\nPlease note that 2K Games and its studios never uses instant messaging apps or personal email accounts to contact prospective employees or conduct interviews and when emailing, only use 2K.com accounts.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6906,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":true},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Console Games","PC Games","Game Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-30T18:45:29Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":50,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.835,"p_room":0.6,"age_days":63,"expected_fill_days":89,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:late","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":149741,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T21:50:10Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":6634,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-18T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":46865},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=46865"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2F2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2F2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2F2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2F2k-games-principal-software-engineer-narrative-systems"}]}