About the position
At Blizzard, we craft genre-defining games and legendary worlds for all to share. Through unparalleled creativity and storytelling, we create immersive universes and iconic characters that are beloved across platforms, borders, backgrounds, and generations - only made possible by building a work environment that nurtures the artistry of game development and unleashes the aspirations of our people. As a Senior AI Gameplay Engineer, you will collaborate with designers and artists to deliver best-in-class enemy combat experiences. You will support the development of combat AI, animation, and combat frameworks, as well as collaborate in driving improvements in the underlying engine technology. You will work collaboratively with the team to define and execute a technical vision that meets the project’s needs. This role is anticipated to be a hybrid work position, with some work on-site and some work-from-home. The potential home studio for this role is Irvine, CA.
Responsibilities
- Leveraging your experience and knowledge to deliver best-in-class player experiences, from end to end, within the constraints of game simulation.
- Empowering designers, artists, and other engineers to deliver the vision of the game and ensuring we delight and entertain our players.
- Collaborating with designers and engineers on gameplay teams to learn and understand their needs and offer technical solutions.
- Optimizing team productivity by supporting pipelines, tool development, and workflow improvements.
Requirements
- 7+ years of experience in gameplay engineering or a combination of applicable training and experience.
- Experience developing using the Unreal engine (both C++ and Blueprint).
- Experience creating compelling combat at AAA-quality level, including combat, high fidelity enemy animation, VFX/SFX, UX etc.
- The ability to understand and write production-grade C++ code.
- The capacity to make frequent, readable, well-tested code commits.
- The ability to communicate and articulate vision, ideas, learnings from others, and to give meaningful feedback.
- Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills.
- Experience analyzing game features and content for performance and optimizing a game to release quality.
- Experience working closely in multi-disciplinary teams with people of diverse mindsets.
- Mentorship mindset and excellent attitude to helping others level up their knowledge.
Nice-to-haves
- Computer science, mathematics, physics, or related degrees.
- Experience developing and shipping AAA game titles for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation consoles.
- Experience working on 3D action multiplayer games.
- Experience with a large codebase.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance.
- 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching.
- Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave.
- Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others.
- Relocation assistance if required to move geographic locations for the job.
