Unreal Engine Developer

Description

Hybrid: preference is 3 days, but flexible in frequency in San Diego, CA

Our client seeks a seasoned Unreal Engine Developer to build developer tooling and panels that run inside Unreal Engine to support animation and live action workflows. The role emphasizes C development for Unreal plugins, thoughtful tool design for artists, and an ability to understand production sequences and pipelines. You will collaborate with a tight, cohesive team and contribute to a multi‑year initiative related to studio work in Los Angeles. The engagement starts as a one‑year contract with potential for extension. Conversion may be considered based on performance and mutual interest.

We can facilitate w2 and corp-to-corp consultants. For our w2 consultants, we offer a great benefits package that includes Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits, 401k with company matching, and life insurance.

Rate: $65.00 to $75.00/hr. w2

• Senior engineering judgment & technical leadership — 5 years with a Bachelor’s in Engineering (or equivalent). Operates as a senior voice—drives architecture and design, weighs trade-offs, and shapes workflows rather than just executing tickets. Thrives amid ambiguity in a startup-like R&D environment.
• Expert Unreal C with plugin & Sequencer depth — Expert in C and UE plugin/extension development (a must). Strong command of UE’s animation toolset—control rig, multi-camera sequences, keyframing—and the ability to customize Sequencer functionality. This native C plugin work is the core of the role. Python and C#/.NET highly desired for adjacent bridge and tooling work.
• Bridges artists and engineers — Channels the voice of the customer (animators) into engineering: translates artist (along with PO) needs into technical design and builds UI/UX that fits how animators actually work. Includes enough Blueprint fluency to read, prototype, and communicate with artists and designers—not as a primary plugin-development language.
• Hands-on with DCC tools & animator workflows — Practical familiarity with the digital content creation tools and processes animators use day-to-day (Maya, Blender, MotionBuilder)—rigging, retargeting, mocap cleanup, and cinematic/previs pipelines—to design tools that fit how artists work, rather than to develop in those tools.
• Applied 3D math for animation — Deep, specific competence in the math that drives character animation: retargeting motion from positional/point data to skeletal bone direction and rotation, quaternion/rotation representation, coordinate-system conversions (e.g., Y-up/Z-up), and vector math in 3D space.
• Integration of R&D AI services, SDKs & modern practice — Integrates external SDKs and APIs—including R&D-provided AI services consumed as an SDK (the engineer leverages and orchestrates these models in the plugin and shapes them into animator workflows, but does not build the models themselves). Solid with source control (Git) and Agile. Passion for emerging tech in Gen AI, virtual production, and animation tooling. Bonus: REST APIs, Firebase, video editing, prototyping.
• Coordinates with fundamental-research teams — Acts as the technical interface to the R&D teams who own the underlying AI technology: manages and prioritizes issues, bug reports, and feature requests against those services, articulates integration needs and animator-driven requirements clearly, and tracks dependencies so the plugin and the research tech evolve in step.