Principal Backend Programmer (Developer Platform)

Epic Games; Cary (NC); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

401(k) match

Unlimited PTO

Mental well-being program

Sabbatical after 7 years

Job summary

Epic Games is seeking a senior technical leader to own the developer platform across source control, CI/CD, build, artifact management, and cloud infrastructure.

You will define strategy across teams and scale our systems to support millions of actions per day, while mentoring engineers and championing AI coding tools and agentic programming.

This role blends hands-on coding with architectural leadership, negotiating trade-offs on cost, reliability, and speed to move the platform forward.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing and operating large-scale infrastructure and developer platforms.
• Deep experience with cloud infrastructure on AWS and/or GCP, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code.
• Broad knowledge of source control, CI/CD and build systems at scale.
• Hands-on programming capabilities in Python or Go.
• Experience with AI coding tools and agentic programming.

Responsibilities

• Set the forward-looking technical strategy and design for the developer platform across source control, CI/CD, build, artifact management, tooling, and cloud infra.
• Define the strategy for software supply chain and pipeline security with security/governance teams.
• Tackle cross-team problems, diagnose root issues, and deliver working solutions.
• Remain hands-on where it matters: prototypes, critical code, and design reviews.
• Write clear strategy documents and decisions for leadership and engineers.
• Collaborate across teams to align priorities and balance cost, reliability, and speed.
• Mentor Senior Programmers and raise technical standards.
• Lead adoption of AI coding tools and agentic engineering with proper guardrails.
• Represent Epic in technical discussions with cloud providers and tool vendors.

Skills

Cloud infrastructure

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Infrastructure as code

Source control

CI/CD

Build systems

Python

Go

AI coding tools

Agentic programming

Leadership

Communication

Tools

GitHub

Job description

WHAT MAKES US EPIC?

At the core of Epic’s success are talented, passionate people. Epic prides itself on creating a collaborative, welcoming, and creative environment. Whether it’s building award-winning games or crafting engine technology that enables others to make visually stunning interactive experiences, we’re always innovating.

Being Epic means being a part of a team that continually strives to do right by our community and users. We’re constantly innovating to raise the bar of engine and game development.

ONLINE INFRASTRUCTURE

What We Do

We enable Epic’s online services teams to build, deploy, and manage services that are used by more than half a billion players around the world. Our mission is to provide world class tools and platforms to improve the experience of our developers and make it easier, faster, and safer to build, operate, and scale their applications. We operate at massive scale as one of the largest cloud computing users in the world.

What You'll Do

You’ll be the senior technical voice across Epic's developer platform: the source control, CI/CD, build, artifact, database and cloud infrastructure that teams across Epic use to build and ship their work. You’ll look at problems across systems and teams, and set the technical strategy for where the platform needs to go. The primary focus of this role is rebuilding and scaling our systems to handle millions of agentic CICD actions per day. You’ll work across teams to understand their requirements and usage patterns, negotiate trade-offs with cost and feasibility in mind, and build and deploy the changes needed. Beyond that, this is a role for someone we can point at a hard, ambiguous problem in any domain or team and trust to understand it, decide what to do, and get it solved, whether that means designing the system and building it yourself, or bringing the right people together. Epic is an agentic-programming-first company. You’ll be expected to use Al coding tools and agents as a normal part of how you work, and help shape how we apply them to our own infrastructure.

In this role, you will

• Set the forward-looking technical strategy and design for the developer platform, across source control, CI/CD, build, artifact management, developer tooling, and cloud infrastructure
• Define the strategy for software supply chain and pipeline security, and partner with the security and governance teams to deliver it
• Take on the hardest cross-team problems, whatever the domain: dig in, find the real issue, decide on an approach and see it through to a working solution
• Stay hands-on where it matters, building prototypes, writing critical code and reviewing designs
• Write clear strategy documents, design proposals and decision records that leadership and programmers can act on
• Work across teams and with leadership to align priorities, make trade-offs between cost, reliability and speed, and influence decisions without direct authority
• Mentor Senior Programmers and Technical Leads, and raise the technical bar across the organization
• Help lead the adoption of Al coding tools and agentic programming across our teams, including the systems, guardrails and ways of working that make it effective and safe
• Represent Epic in technical discussions with cloud providers and tool vendors, such as AWS, Google Cloud, GitHub

What we're looking for

• Extensive experience designing and operating large-scale infrastructure and developer platforms, with a track record of shaping strategy across multiple systems and teams
• Deep experience with cloud infrastructure on AWS and/or GCP, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code
• Broad knowledge of source control, CI/CD and build systems at scale, and of how they fit together end to end
• Strong understanding of software supply chain and infrastructure security, and experience working with security and governance teams
• A track record of leading cross-team technical initiatives from an ambiguous problem through to delivered results
• Still a strong hands-on programmer, comfortable writing production code and tooling in Python, Go or similar
• Experienced with Al coding tools and agentic engineering, with opinions on how teams should adopt them
• Excellent written and verbal communicator, able to explain complex trade-offs to engineers and leadership alike
• Good judgment in ambiguous situations, and comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
• Experience with databases or data infrastructure at scale would be a plus
• Experience working with cloud providers and vendors on capacity, roadmap or commercial topics would be a plus

EPIC JOB + EPIC BENEFITS = EPIC LIFE

• Our intent is to cover all things that are medically necessary and improve the quality of life.
• We pay 100% of the premiums for both you and your dependents.
• Our coverage includes Medical, Dental, a Vision HRA, Long Term Disability, Life Insurance & a 401k with competitive match.
• We also offer a robust mental well-being program through Modern Health, which provides free therapy and coaching for employees & dependents.
• Throughout the year we celebrate our employees with events and company-wide paid breaks.
• We offer unlimited PTO and sick time.
• Recognize individuals for 7 years of employment with a paid sabbatical.

ABOUT US

Epic Games is a leading interactive entertainment company. For over 30 years we've been making award-winning games and engine technology that empowers others to make visually stunning games and 3D content that bring environments to life like never before. Epic's award-winning Unreal Engine technology not only provides game developers the ability to build high-fidelity, interactive experiences for PC, console, mobile, and VR, it is also a tool being embraced by content creators across a variety of industries such as media and entertainment, automotive, and architectural design. As we continue to build our Engine technology and develop remarkable games, we strive to build teams of world-class talent.

Like what you hear? Come be a part of something Epic!

Epic Games deeply values diverse teams and an inclusive work culture, and we are proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. Learn more about our Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy here.