Senior AI Programmer — Unreal NPC Systems & Generative AI

the hive; Greater London; On-site; GBP 131,000 - 211,000; Full time

Job summary

Epic Games is seeking a Senior AI Programmer to join the Unreal Engine NPC team. You will own core NPC tech powering characters in UE, Fortnite, and UEFN, focusing on behavior, perception, and navigation, and enabling generation-based features.

You will collaborate with ML research groups, optimize performance, and push the boundaries of real-time AI in a live-service game ecosystem. Remote/multi-location options across North America are available.

Qualifications

• Shipped AAA titles with hands-on experience building AI systems (behavior trees, perception, pathfinding, etc.).
• Experience with Unreal Engine (UE), preferably in system design.
• Experience integrating LLMs or other generative models into real-time applications is a plus.
• Live-service game experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Extend, evolve, and maintain UE's NPC systems, including behavior, perception, and navigation.
• Design and present new technical design and APIs for NPC systems used by developers worldwide.
• Evaluate and experiment with in-game generative AI features in close collaboration with Epic's ML research groups.
• Optimize performance, memory usage, and scalability of NPC systems across UE.

Skills

C++

AI systems

NPC systems

System design

Communication

Job description

Epic Games is seeking a Senior AI Programmer to join the Unreal Engine NPC team. You will own core NPC tech powering characters in UE, Fortnite, and UEFN, focusing on behavior, perception, and navigation, and enabling generation-based features.

You will collaborate with ML research groups, optimize performance, and push the boundaries of real-time AI in a live-service game ecosystem. Remote/multi-location options across North America are available.