2K
Staff Software Engineer
Austin, Texas, United States · Staff+
Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 5 days ago
JavaScriptTypeScriptGoC++C#Code ReviewGitAPI DevelopmentRESTLLMsRAGA/B TestingUnityUnreal EngineLeadershipCollaboration
About the role
- We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to be the senior technical voice across our family of cross-platform, cross-language SDKs.
- Your most important job on day one is driving architectural consistency across our language and engine variants.
- We expect you to push the boundaries of what's possible when AI is embedded into every aspect of senior engineering work.
Responsibilities
- Drive technical decisions across the SDK portfolio set by the Director and through collaboration with the team.
- Defend the architectural direction for how our SDKs are designed, layered, versioned, and evolved across Unreal, Unity, native C++, Go, JavaScript, and other targets.
- Stay hands-on. Write production code, prototype the hard problems first, lead the toughest implementations, and be a consistent presence in code review.
- A natural collaborator who leads through influence rather than authority-able to build trust across teams, bring people along on technical decisions, and elevate the engineers around you through empathy and clear communication.
- Define and uphold the bar for API design, documentation, backward compatibility, performance, and reliability-and make those standards legible to the rest of the team.
- Use LLMs and AI-powered workflows daily to accelerate your work: prototyping designs, generating boilerplate across languages, exploring refactors, drafting technical proposals, and automating repetitive engineering tasks.
- Build AI-assisted tooling that scales the SDK team's impact-whether that's code generation pipelines, automated review assistants, intelligent search over our SDK surface area, or anything else that compounds team output.
- Partner with engineering managers on technical strategy, hiring, and team growth without owning people management yourself.
- Work directly with studio engineering leads to understanding how our SDKs are actually used in production and feeds those learnings back into the roadmap.
- Our SDKs ship in nearly every game 2K publishes, with first-class support across Unreal, Unity, native C++, Go, JavaScript, and more-and we need someone who can hold the architectural picture across all of them.
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time spent designing and shipping SDKs, libraries, tools, or platform APIs that other engineers depend on.
- Fluency in C++ and at least one of C# (Unity), Go, or JavaScript / TypeScript-and the ability to ramp quickly on the others.
- Hands-on experience with Unreal and / or Unity, including how engines integrate with external native libraries.
- You can hold a strong opinion, defend it with evidence, and change it when the evidence shifts.
- Track record of working effectively across teams without formal authority.
- Experience shipping developer tools or platforms in the games industry.
- Experience with binding generators, FFI, or maintaining a native core with multiple language wrappers.
- Fluency in C++ and at least one of C# (Unity), Go, or JavaScript / TypeScript-and the ability to ramp quickly on the others. You don't need to be an expert in every language we ship
- you do need to be the person who can hold the architectural picture across all of them.
- Strong instincts around API design, versioning, deprecation, and backward compatibility-you've felt the pain of getting these wrong and know how to avoid it.
- Hands-on experience working with LLM tools (Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar) as part of your daily engineering workflow-not just experimentation, but real productivity gains and a point of view on where AI fits and where it doesn't.
- Comfortable being the technical decision-maker. You can hold a strong opinion, defend it with evidence, and change it when the evidence shifts.
- A clear, generous communicator. You write design docs people actually read, give code review feedback that lifts the team, and can explain trade-offs to non-engineers.
- Bonus Items
- Prior experience shipping software on console platforms (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch), including familiarity with platform certification requirements and console-specific SDK constraints.
- Background in online services, networking, telemetry, or live operations.
Skills
- Our portfolio is brought to life by some of the most influential game development studios in the world.
- But what truly powers 2K is our people.
Company info
- At 2K, we create some of the most iconic and culture-shaping video games in entertainment, including NBA® 2K, one of the top-selling franchises in the world, and legendary titles like BioShock®, Borderlands®, Mafia, Sid Meier's Civilization®, and XCOM®, as well as fan favorites WWE® 2K, TopSpin®, and PGA TOUR® 2K. We build unforgettable experiences by pushing the boundaries of creativity, authenticity and innovation across every genre.
- Our portfolio is brought to life by some of the most influential game development studios in the world. Visual Concepts, Firaxis Games, Hangar 13, Cat Daddy Games, 31st Union, Cloud Chamber, Gearbox, HB Studios, and 2K SportsLab create world-class experiences across platforms. But what truly powers 2K is our people. We believe the best ideas come from teams that feel empowered, supported, and inspired. As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive workplace where people are encouraged to come as they are and do their best work.
- At 2K, we create some of the most iconic and culture-shaping video games in entertainment, including NBA® 2K, one of the top-selling franchises in the world, and legendary titles like BioShock®, Borderlands®, Mafia, Sid Meier's Civilization®, and XCOM®, as well as fan favorites WWE® 2K, TopSpin®, and PGA TOUR® 2K.
- We build unforgettable experiences by pushing the boundaries of creativity, authenticity and innovation across every genre.
- Visual Concepts, Firaxis Games, Hangar 13, Cat Daddy Games, 31st Union, Cloud Chamber, Gearbox, HB Studios, and 2K SportsLab create world-class experiences across platforms.
- We believe the best ideas come from teams that feel empowered, supported, and inspired.
- As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive workplace where people are encouraged to come as they are and do their best work.
This listing is sourced directly from 2K's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.