Principal Engineer at Epic Games in Cary, NC

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. IT What We Do Create and maintain a proactive and stable IT environment as well as provide IT support to our Epic people. You will be empowered to shape processes that deliver optimized IT service across our business. Work with emerging technologies while enabling IT success for everyone. What You'll Do You'll be the technical backbone of EPE. This role sits at the intersection of technical leadership and hands-on programming. You'll own the standards, architecture patterns, and programming practices that the org runs on. You'll also be the person we pull into our most complex and visible projects when they need principal-level programming muscle to get across the finish line. You will work alongside the team leads as a peer and influence the technical direction with a hands-on approach. In any given week this role may be defining a new AI-assisted development process, writing production code, and explaining complex technical decisions to executive leadership. In this role, you will Own technical standards, best practices, and architectural guidance across multiple teams Step into the org's highest-priority projects when they need hands-on help to ship Partner with team leads to raise the quality bar on design, code, and delivery Drive EPE's programming direction, including how we build with tools like Claude Code, Cloud Infrastructure, and LLM primitives Direct AI development tools to build, test, and review code. Debug problems and unblock teams Drive operational maturity: CI/CD pipelines, testing practices, code quality, observability, and infrastructure-as-code, as well as evaluate new tools and patterns, then help teams adopt them without disrupting delivery Mentor programmers across multiple teams in both software development and AI programming, as well as represent EPE's technical direction in cross-org conversations with other programming leaders and executives at Epic What we're looking for 7+ years of professional software programming experience, with meaningful time spent as a senior individual contributor or technical lead Deep, hands-on expertise in Python and Golang for production systems, as well as strong experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, including infrastructure-as-code (Terraform preferred) Real, practical experience building AI-powered systems: RAG architectures, prompt programming, context window management, LLM integrations, and agentic workflows, as well as familiarity with AI development tools like Claude Code and similar coding assistants, not just as a user but understanding how to build effective workflows around them Solid DevOps background: CI/CD (Github Actions preferred), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), automated testing, and release management Strong experience designing and operating distributed systems, APIs, and service deployments in production Demonstrated ability to context-switch between strategic technical leadership and deep hands-on programming work Experience setting and maintaining programming standards across multiple teams without having direct authority over those teams Strong communication skills. You can explain a technical decision to a director and a junior programmer in the same afternoon and both walk away understanding it Comfort with ambiguity. EPE solves problems across the entire company, so the domain changes constantly. You need to be someone who thrives on that, not someone who needs a narrow lane 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 and recognize individuals for 7 years of employment with a paid sabbatical. ABOUT US Epic Games spans across 25 countries with 46 studios and 4,500+ employees globally. For over 25 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. Note to Recruitment Agencies: Epic does not accept any unsolicited resumes or approaches from any unauthorized third party (including recruitment or placement agencies) (i.e., a third party with whom we do not have a negotiated and validly executed agreement). We will not pay any fees to any unauthorized third party. Further details on these matters can be found here.