Senior Backend Engineer

Epic Games; Washington; On-site; USD 223,000 - 327,000; Full time

Job summary

Epic Games seeks a Technical Lead / Principal Engineer to steer AI-enabled developer tools used by thousands of engineers across Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and more. You will shape architectural direction, guide the AI tooling strategy, and hands-on build complex AI platforms while mentoring teams to deliver high-impact software.

The role emphasizes leadership, scalable systems, and secure, compliant AI tooling across multiple modalities and environments. Open to multiple US locations including WA.

Qualifications

• BS in CS or equivalent with 10+ years building production software systems.
• Proven leadership for complex software projects at scale.
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools and modern AI frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and architectural vision for production AI developer tools.
• Drive scalable, maintainable developer-facing tools across CLI, desktop, web, and APIs.
• Mentor engineers and establish best practices for AI tooling and code quality.
• Define security, governance, and compliance protocols for AI platforms.

Skills

AI engineering leadership

REST APIs

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Software architecture

Zero-to-one platforms

Education

BS in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

Copilot

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

As Technical Lead / Principal Engineer on the Al Engineering team, you'll provide technical leadership and strategic vision for the Al-powered platforms, tools and services that accelerate development velocity and productivity across Epic. You'll guide a team of engineers in building high-impact products like unified Al code review systems, Cloud agent hosting, centralized Al knowledge base and developer experience tools that serve thousands of folks across the company. This role sits at the intersection of Al innovation, practical engineering, and technical leadership. You'll set the technical direction for tools that developers across Epic use every day, establish best practices for Al‑powered development tooling, mentor engineers, and shape how thousands of engineers write, review, and ship code. On top of that you'll be hands‑on building complex aspects of the systems and working heavily with Al agents to implement, test, release, and operate these critical platforms.

In this role, you will

• Provide technical leadership and architectural vision for production‑grade AI developer tools used by thousands of engineers across Epic's major codebases (Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and more)
• Drive architectural decisions for scalable, maintainable developer-facing tools across multiple modalities: CLI and desktop tools, web apps, build process integrations, services, and APIs
• Pioneer and establish patterns for modern AI frameworks and agent architectures, setting standards for the broader team
• Partner with leadership and high‑value teams to identify strategic opportunities and design/build/validate new platforms
• Design and implement security, governance, and compliance protocols for AI platforms, including secret management, workload identity, and runtime isolation policies
• Define measurement strategies and success metrics to track impact and continuously improve tool effectiveness
• Mentor and grow a team of software engineers, conducting architecture reviews and raising the bar for technical excellence

What we're looking for

• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent experience with 10+ years building production software systems
• Track record of providing technical leadership for complex software projects from conception to delivery at scale
• Proven experience in "zero-to-one" platform ownership: leading the technical design, architectural strategy, and initial build-out of new platforms before they are fully staffed and scaled
• Expert‑level experience with REST APIs, microservices, and distributed systems
• Experience operating and orchestrating scalable services on Kubernetes, including managing container lifecycle and security configurations
• Experience with and high level of interest in using and building AI‑assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot)
• Proven ability to turn ambiguous organizational problems into concrete technical strategies and drive them to completion

This role is open to multiple locations across the US (including WA).

Pay Transparency Information

The expected annual base pay range(s) for this position are detailed below. Each base pay range is relevant only for individuals who are residents of or will be expected to work within the specified locale. Compensation varies based on a variety of factors, which include (but aren't limited to) things such as skills and competencies, qualifications, knowledge, and experience. In addition to base pay, most employees are eligible to participate in Epic's generous benefit plans and discretionary incentive programs (subject to the terms of those plans or programs).

Washington Base Pay Range$223,199-$327,358 USD 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 technol