Company Description
Ubisoft is a world leader in the video game industry, with teams around the world creating original and memorable experiences, from Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six to Just Dance and much more. We are convinced that diverse perspectives allow both players and teams to thrive. If you are passionate about innovation and pushing the boundaries of entertainment, join us and help create the unknown!
Job Description
What you will do
As a Technical Lead, you will act as the technical reference for multiplayer systems, network architecture, game state replication, dedicated server technologies, and online services. You will define the long-term technical strategy for network systems while leading a team of programmers responsible for delivering high-performance, scalable, and secure multiplayer experiences.
You will contribute to architectural decisions that impact millions of players, balancing gameplay requirements, server performance, scalability, reliability, security, and operating costs. You will collaborate closely with gameplay, engine, online services, security, data, production, and live operations teams to ensure an online experience that meets the highest standards of quality and competitiveness.
In the spirit of the Technical Lead role at Ubisoft, you will be responsible for defining the technical vision, ensuring technological oversight of the systems under your responsibility, supporting talent development, and acting as a trusted expert within the organization.
Main Responsibilities
Technical Vision and Architecture
- Define and drive the network architecture roadmap for current and future projects.
- Establish long-term strategies regarding:
- Game state replication
- Server authority models
- Client-side prediction and reconciliation mechanisms
- Lag compensation
- Matchmaking system integration
- Online infrastructures
- Distributed game services
- Make critical technical decisions related to server architectures, network technology frameworks, and backend integrations.
- Evaluate technical trade-offs between latency, bandwidth, scalability, security, and development speed.
- Ensure that network systems remain scalable throughout the game's live service lifecycle.
Multiplayer Systems Governance
- Take responsibility for the architecture and evolution of:
- Dedicated game servers
- Replication systems
- Session management
- Matchmaking integrations
- Backend service integrations
- Cross-platform multiplayer features
- Define performance budgets and best practices for networking.
- Lead initiatives aimed at improving server stability, availability, and operational efficiency.
- Lead analyses and investigations related to systemic issues affecting the online gaming experience.
- Ensure that network systems support future gameplay ambitions without requiring major overhauls.
Performance and Scalability
- Define performance objectives for:
- Server tick rates
- Bandwidth consumption
- CPU usage
- Memory usage
- Replication-related costs
- Service response times
- Analyze large-scale telemetry data as well as production indicators.
- Lead optimization initiatives for high-volume multiplayer environments.
- Develop strategies supporting player population growth and evolving infrastructure needs.
- Collaborate with Live Operations and Online Services teams to ensure service health and performance.
Reliability and Security
- Define standards for resilience, availability, and fault tolerance.
- Implement initiatives aimed at reducing service interruptions and downtime.
- Collaborate with security teams to prevent and mitigate:
- Vulnerability exploits
- Network packet manipulation
- Attempts to bypass server authority
- Cheat vectors
- Service abuse
- Define secure practices for network communication across the project.
- Participate in incident response and root cause analysis during major production issues.
Leadership and Mentorship
- Mentor and develop programmers specializing in network and online systems.
- Support engineers in their progression toward senior or expert roles.
- Review architectures, technical designs, and code to ensure technical excellence.
- Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous learning.
- Define best practices and technical standards for multiplayer development.
- Act as the primary point of escalation for complex network issues.
Multidisciplinary Collaboration
- Collaborate closely with teams in:
- Gameplay Programming
- Game Engine Programming
- Quality Assurance and Quality Engineering
- SRE / Operations
- Backend Services
- Data Engineering
- Security
- Production
- Translate technical constraints into clear, actionable recommendations for non-technical stakeholders.
- Ensure alignment of the multiplayer architecture with business, production, and player experience goals.
- Coordinate network initiatives between multiple teams and studios when necessary.
Qualifications
What you bring
Required Requirements
- 10+ years of professional experience in software development.
- 7+ years of experience in multiplayer systems development.
- Demonstrated experience leading technical initiatives for large-scale online games.
- In-depth expertise in the following areas:
- Client-server architecture
- Real-time networking
- Replication models
- Distributed systems
- Concurrency and multithreaded programming
- Performance optimization
- Excellent mastery of the C++ language.
- Experience in the development and operation of dedicated servers.
- Experience supporting live service products in production.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams.
Assets
- Experience delivering competitive multiplayer games.
- Experience with large-scale live service architectures.
- Experience developing backend services and cloud-native systems.
- Knowledge of platforms and technologies such as AWS, Azure, GameLift, PlayFab, and service orchestration tools.
- Experience with telemetry, observability, and monitoring in production.
- Experience within global development organizations involving multiple studios.