Gameplay Engineer Jobs
Gameplay Engineer jobs are open across AAA studios, indie developers, mobile game companies, and console platform holders, from junior to staff and principal levels, with specializations in physics systems, AI behaviors, and multiplayer networking. Scan the live roles below and apply to whichever ones fit.
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Showing 5 of 22+ Gameplay Engineer jobs
What we are looking for:
As a Lead Gameplay Engineer, you will help shape the technical vision for 3C gameplay (character, camera, and combat) in a fast-paced game built on Unreal Engine 5. You will be the bridge between design intent and technical reality, turning ambitious ideas into systems that feel great in the player's hands, scale with the game, and ship on schedule. You will lead a team of gameplay engineers on core 3C systems while staying hands-on in the code, with significant opportunities to shape the game and how we build it. This role suits a lead who enjoys building great systems and growing great engineers in equal measure.
What we will do together:
- Drive the technical direction of your team's weapons, mobility, and camera systems from prototype through ship, with a primary focus on, but not limited to, those areas and the data-driven systems that support them.
- With your team, architect character movement, traversal, weapons, and camera systems alongside Design and Animation, so the game feels responsive, readable, and fair.
- Make movement, aiming, and shooting feel responsive, precise, and great in the player's hands.
- Lead hands-on development in C++ and Blueprint, owning the performance and stability of your team's systems.
- Partner with Production to keep your team tasked and planned, anticipating risks and owning deliverables.
- Partner with Technical Art and Design on tooling and content validation, and lead refactors to production quality.
- Set and uphold engineering standards: code review, build stability, testing, and documentation.
- Manage a team of around five direct reports: mentor them on architecture and design, unblock and guide their work, and own 1:1s, performance, career growth, and hiring.
- Champion agentic workflows, automation, and test-driven development, keeping human review central.
What you will bring:
- Shipped 3C systems (character movement, camera, and combat/shooting).
- A track record of shipping AAA titles through a full development cycle and/or a live-service game post-launch.
- Shipped networked gameplay (prediction, lag compensation, hit registration).
- Proven delivery against production schedules: planning, anticipating work, and hitting deliverables.
- Proven, proactive leadership of engineers toward durable solutions: reviewing work, guiding architecture and design, unblocking, and career growth.
- Hands-on Unreal Engine 5 experience; if not a UE5 expert, a proven track record of adapting across engines.
- Strong game C++: performance, memory management, and low-level profiling and debugging when needed.
- Deep, hands-on experience with data-driven ability, combat, mobility, or camera systems, from building or extending one to understanding how frameworks like GAS or Unreal's movement and camera work internally.
- A data-driven mindset, a deep understanding of game design, and a holistic view of the full game, in tune with product and design intent.
- Strong cross-discipline communication and the drive to take large features from concept to completion.
- An open mind and flexibility as priorities, assignments, and the role evolve across development phases.
- Curiosity and sharp judgment: you frame problems clearly, delegate well, verify results critically, and can articulate and evangelize how tools like Claude Code or Cursor have changed the way you work.
- Experience refactoring or building production-grade, scalable gameplay systems is a strong plus.
- Ideally, you have shipped, or built real depth in, action games with fast, responsive combat.
- Experience with animation systems (Animation Blueprints, motion matching, root motion) is a strong plus.
- Varied networking models (replication, rollback, snapshot), console or mobile, or aim tuning are a bonus.
Interested… a bit about Escape Velocity:
Escape Velocity is a team of passionate, talented developers working at a studio that offers excellent benefits, on what we believe is a once-in-a-career project with a committed publisher. But that doesn't necessarily make us unique. What does make us special? We value the time, energy, and talent of our players and our colleagues. We want every hour spent developing and playing our games to be an incredibly rewarding and worthwhile use of your time. To that end, we are 'Fully Remote' and support team members nearly anywhere in the world. We prioritize honesty, even when that means sharing bad news. We strive to give everyone autonomy so they can determine how best to work and play, and we care more about what you bring to the game and studio than how many hours you're clocking. We're dedicated to building a culture of play, which not only makes us better game makers, but also strengthens the bonds between us all. We believe in constant improvement across all areas – from the game itself to our production design – and are constantly re-evaluating how we spend our time to ensure that we're not wasting yours and we're all always working on the most important things.
A few benefits you can expect from us:
- A generous PTO allowance
- Summer and Winter holidays studio closure (separate to PTO allowance)
- Private Medical & Dental Healthcare
- Private Mental Health scheme
- A generous annual Health & Wellbeing allowance
- Top range tech for your home set up
- Other benefits based on your region
How to apply:
Click apply and complete an application along with a Resume / CV. If we would like to move forward with your application, a member of the Recruiting Team will reach out to you and guide you through our process.
Escape Velocity is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to hiring, promoting, and compensating employees based on their qualifications and demonstrated ability to perform job responsibilities.
Applications will be considered regardless of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, belief, race, or any other protected category.
What we are looking for:
As a Lead Gameplay Engineer, you will help shape the technical vision for 3C gameplay (character, camera, and combat) in a fast-paced game built on Unreal Engine 5. You will be the bridge between design intent and technical reality, turning ambitious ideas into systems that feel great in the player's hands, scale with the game, and ship on schedule. You will lead a team of gameplay engineers on core 3C systems while staying hands-on in the code, with significant opportunities to shape the game and how we build it. This role suits a lead who enjoys building great systems and growing great engineers in equal measure.
What we will do together:
- Drive the technical direction of your team's weapons, mobility, and camera systems from prototype through ship, with a primary focus on, but not limited to, those areas and the data-driven systems that support them.
- With your team, architect character movement, traversal, weapons, and camera systems alongside Design and Animation, so the game feels responsive, readable, and fair.
- Make movement, aiming, and shooting feel responsive, precise, and great in the player's hands.
- Lead hands-on development in C++ and Blueprint, owning the performance and stability of your team's systems.
- Partner with Production to keep your team tasked and planned, anticipating risks and owning deliverables.
- Partner with Technical Art and Design on tooling and content validation, and lead refactors to production quality.
- Set and uphold engineering standards: code review, build stability, testing, and documentation.
- Manage a team of around five direct reports: mentor them on architecture and design, unblock and guide their work, and own 1:1s, performance, career growth, and hiring.
- Champion agentic workflows, automation, and test-driven development, keeping human review central.
What you will bring:
- Shipped 3C systems (character movement, camera, and combat/shooting).
- A track record of shipping AAA titles through a full development cycle and/or a live-service game post-launch.
- Shipped networked gameplay (prediction, lag compensation, hit registration).
- Proven delivery against production schedules: planning, anticipating work, and hitting deliverables.
- Proven, proactive leadership of engineers toward durable solutions: reviewing work, guiding architecture and design, unblocking, and career growth.
- Hands-on Unreal Engine 5 experience; if not a UE5 expert, a proven track record of adapting across engines.
- Strong game C++: performance, memory management, and low-level profiling and debugging when needed.
- Deep, hands-on experience with data-driven ability, combat, mobility, or camera systems, from building or extending one to understanding how frameworks like GAS or Unreal's movement and camera work internally.
- A data-driven mindset, a deep understanding of game design, and a holistic view of the full game, in tune with product and design intent.
- Strong cross-discipline communication and the drive to take large features from concept to completion.
- An open mind and flexibility as priorities, assignments, and the role evolve across development phases.
- Curiosity and sharp judgment: you frame problems clearly, delegate well, verify results critically, and can articulate and evangelize how tools like Claude Code or Cursor have changed the way you work.
- Experience refactoring or building production-grade, scalable gameplay systems is a strong plus.
- Ideally, you have shipped, or built real depth in, action games with fast, responsive combat.
- Experience with animation systems (Animation Blueprints, motion matching, root motion) is a strong plus.
- Varied networking models (replication, rollback, snapshot), console or mobile, or aim tuning are a bonus.
Interested… a bit about Escape Velocity:
Escape Velocity is a team of passionate, talented developers working at a studio that offers excellent benefits, on what we believe is a once-in-a-career project with a committed publisher. But that doesn't necessarily make us unique. What does make us special? We value the time, energy, and talent of our players and our colleagues. We want every hour spent developing and playing our games to be an incredibly rewarding and worthwhile use of your time. To that end, we are 'Fully Remote' and support team members nearly anywhere in the world. We prioritize honesty, even when that means sharing bad news. We strive to give everyone autonomy so they can determine how best to work and play, and we care more about what you bring to the game and studio than how many hours you're clocking. We're dedicated to building a culture of play, which not only makes us better game makers, but also strengthens the bonds between us all. We believe in constant improvement across all areas – from the game itself to our production design – and are constantly re-evaluating how we spend our time to ensure that we're not wasting yours and we're all always working on the most important things.
A few benefits you can expect from us:
- A generous PTO allowance
- Summer and Winter holidays studio closure (separate to PTO allowance)
- Private Medical & Dental Healthcare
- Private Mental Health scheme
- A generous annual Health & Wellbeing allowance
- Top range tech for your home set up
- Other benefits based on your region
How to apply:
Click apply and complete an application along with a Resume / CV. If we would like to move forward with your application, a member of the Recruiting Team will reach out to you and guide you through our process.
Escape Velocity is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to hiring, promoting, and compensating employees based on their qualifications and demonstrated ability to perform job responsibilities.
Applications will be considered regardless of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, belief, race, or any other protected category.
See All 22 Gameplay Engineer Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Gameplay Engineer JobsGameplay Engineer Job Market
Who's Hiring
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
- Media & Entertainment
- Distribution & Wholesale
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in gameplay engineer jobs.
- Proficiency in C++ or C# with hands-on experience in Unreal Engine or Unity
- Experience shipping at least one commercial title in a gameplay or systems engineering role
- Strong understanding of game physics, collision, and character movement systems
- Familiarity with multiplayer networking concepts including client-server architecture and lag compensation
- Ability to profile, debug, and optimize real-time gameplay systems for target frame rates
- Experience collaborating with designers using visual scripting tools such as Blueprints or visual scripting in Unity
Tips for Your Gameplay Engineer Job Search
Tailor your resume to engine-specific roles
Gameplay engineer postings often specify Unreal or Unity hard requirements, not preferences. List the engine version you know, your scripting language of choice, and at least one shipped title or playable demo in your top three bullet points.
Show systems thinking in your portfolio
Hiring teams want to see how you architected a system, not just that it worked. Annotate each portfolio project with a short breakdown of the design decisions you made, the tradeoffs you considered, and what you would change now.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists gameplay engineer openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Target studios by genre to narrow your search
Gameplay engineering skills transfer differently across genres. If your experience is in first-person shooters, prioritize studios with active FPS titles rather than applying broadly. Your portfolio context will land harder when the interviewer recognizes the genre conventions.
Prepare a live coding walk-through before interviews
Many gameplay engineer interviews include a live session where you implement a small mechanic, such as a jump arc or a simple state machine, in your primary engine. Practice narrating your reasoning as you code so interviewers can follow your thought process in real time.
Negotiate start date to protect project continuity
Game studios often align hiring with milestone schedules. Ask about the current project phase during your final-round conversation and use that to propose a start date that lets you ramp up before a crunch cycle, giving you a stronger opening position.
Gameplay Engineer Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most gameplay engineers?
The most active employers for gameplay engineers right now are Riot Games, Riot Games, and Doge Labs, and the most openings are in California, Wisconsin, and Texas, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Demand tends to cluster around studios in active production on a new title.
How many gameplay engineer jobs are remote?
About 73% of gameplay engineer openings are fully remote or hybrid as of November 2026, though the share varies significantly by studio size and project stage. Multiplayer and UI-adjacent gameplay roles tend to appear remotely more often than roles focused on physics or real-time animation systems, which frequently require on-site access to test hardware.
How do you become a gameplay engineer?
Start by learning C++ or C# to a level where you can build small, complete systems without tutorials, then pick one engine, either Unreal or Unity, and build several finished mechanics in it. Contribute to a game jam or open-source game project to get a shipped credit, document your work thoroughly, and apply to junior or associate gameplay roles at studios whose genres match what you have built.
Can you get hired as a gameplay engineer with little or no experience?
Yes, but your portfolio has to replace the experience gap. Studios hiring at the junior level want to see that you can implement a complete, functional mechanic, not just follow a tutorial. Build three to five focused demos, each demonstrating a different system such as enemy AI, physics interaction, or a custom movement controller, and document the design decisions behind each one so interviewers can assess your engineering reasoning.
What does the gameplay engineer interview process look like?
Most gameplay engineer pipelines include an initial recruiter screen, a technical phone interview covering data structures and engine concepts, and at least one live or take-home coding exercise where you implement a small mechanic from scratch. Later rounds typically involve a portfolio deep-dive with senior engineers and a team culture conversation. Some studios add a design discussion where you critique or extend an existing system from one of their shipped titles.
Where can I find and apply to gameplay engineer jobs?
You can find and apply to gameplay engineer jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from studios and game companies across the United States. Search for roles that match your engine experience and seniority level, then apply directly to each listing that fits your background.
See All 22 Gameplay Engineer Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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