Principal Game Developer

Join to apply for the Principal Game Developer - Talent Pool role at Kokku

Join to apply for the Principal Game Developer - Talent Pool role at Kokku

The Principal Engineer plays a pivotal role in shaping and delivering robust, scalable, and high-performance game systems. This position is responsible for architecting and implementing complex technical solutions, ensuring seamless cross-platform functionality while balancing technical requirements across multiple stakeholders. The Principal Engineer drives innovation through best practices, technical mentorship, and high-level problem-solving, contributing to the overall technical excellence of the organization. By collaborating across departments, acting as a consultant on multiple projects, and influencing engineering standards, this role ensures high-quality execution aligned with both project and business objectives.

Working within a collaborative co-development (co-dev), full development, and porting environment, the Software Engineer contributes to solving complex, challenging problems with impactful solutions that deliver value to our clients and players. By embracing engineering excellence, they are empowered to define and implement technical solutions that align with our commitment to quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of large-scale projects, making strategic technical decisions that align with the company's broader objectives, such as designing and optimizing backend architectures for concurrent multiplayer systems.
• Establish and enforce technical standards across the department, promoting modern development practices like microservices for backend, modular design, and multi-threaded programming to prevent race conditions.
• Oversee architectural practices to ensure high-quality outcomes, implementing quality gates in CI/CD pipelines to enforce automated testing and performance benchmarks.
• Act as a technical authority, advising and influencing multiple projects by integrating cutting-edge technologies, such as advanced rendering techniques or transitioning to Unreal Engine 5 for its Lumen, Nanite and RayTracing capabilities.
• Provide expert technical support across multiple projects, serving as a key consultant for complex challenges like resolving severe performance bottlenecks or ensuring seamless cross-platform compatibility.
• Drive innovation and continuous improvement, aligning technical direction with market trends to attract AAA publishers and maintain industry leadership.
• Deliver technical training and mentorship, identifying industry trends and skill gaps to inform hiring strategies and professional development initiatives.
• Stay ahead of emerging technologies, such as machine learning and procedural generation, assessing their impact on game development and integrating them where applicable.
  
  

Technical Requirements

Must have

• Solid experience in software development, working with C++
• Proven ability to architect and develop scalable systems in Unreal Engine, Unity, or proprietary engines.
• Identifies and escalates potential technical risks early, ensuring smooth development and avoiding major blockers
• Experience optimizing multiplayer architectures, including networking, replication, and client-server communication
• Strong expertise in performance optimization, including CPU/GPU profiling and debugging multi-threaded code
• Ability to design and implement developer tools to enhance workflow efficiency
• Experience with UI development, ensuring high-performance rendering and user-friendly interfaces
• Solid understanding of rendering pipelines, shader development, and performance optimizations in modern game engines, such as Metal, Vulkan, DX11/12
• Rendering profiling and debugging expertise, using tools like RenderDoc, Unreal Insights, and Nvidia Aftermath for performance analysis and optimization
• Experience with console development (Gen8/Gen9 – PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X|S), including platform optimizations
• Expertise in managing complex version control workflows across multiple teams and projects, ensuring seamless integration and code quality
• Strong knowledge of version control systems (Perforce, Plastic, Git, etc.), managing large-scale collaborative development environments
• Deep experience with physics engines (Havok, Chaos, PhysX, Bullet, Box2D), implementing and optimizing physics-based interactions for game mechanics
• Advanced English (B2/C1), with the ability to clearly communicate technical concepts to team members
  
  

Nice to have

• Solid experience in game development with a strong focus on C++
• Experience in defining and driving technological innovation within the gaming industry, influencing trends and best practices at a high level
• Ability to engage with external partners, aligning technical solutions with business goals and fostering long-term collaboration
• Proven ability to align technical decisions with business objectives, ensuring engineering efforts support long-term company growth
• Expertise in modular architecture (ECS, rendering abstraction, platform abstraction), ensuring efficient, reusable, and adaptable game components
• Advanced understanding of linear algebra, game math, and shaders, applying mathematical concepts to optimize graphics and physics simulations
• Experience with GAS (Gameplay Ability System), designing and optimizing complex gameplay mechanics in Unreal Engine
• Deep experience with physics engines (Havok, Chaos, PhysX, Bullet, Box2D), implementing and optimizing physics-based interactions for game mechanics
• Familiarity with Machine Learning and Procedural AI, leveraging AI-driven systems for content generation and game mechanics

Seniority level

• Seniority levelNot Applicable

Employment type

• Employment typeFull-time

Job function

• Job functionEngineering and Information Technology
• IndustriesEntertainment Providers

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