Senior Unreal Engine Engineer

We started LoreWeaver because we hit a wall in our own game development. We wanted real player agency, choices that branch and carry consequences, but we didn’t have the budget to do everything by hand. We built the tooling we wished existed and it turned into something bigger.

Now we’re looking for a Senior Unreal engineer who wants to help link our digital game master to the game engine.

Location: Hybrid (Netherlands preferred)

Type: Senior hire (employment or contractor), with an optional founding/co-founder track

Commitment: Full-time

Equity: Available; scope depends on role seniority and track (negotiable)

Salary: €5,000 – €8,000 per month (gross) after follow-up funding (expected Q1 2026). We’re bootstrapping with an equity focus for the first 3–6 months, with a negotiable initial stipend to cover essentials.

Website: https://www.loreweaver.ink/

LoreWeaver builds the next-gen narrative backend for digital storytelling. A dual-product suite that merges AI authoring with real-time storytelling.

• Architect: an AI-powered authoring workstation that transforms a studio’s lore and scripts into playable dialogue, branching quests, and interactive story arcs.
• Director: a lightweight Unreal and Unity plug-in that generates adaptive, context-aware dialogue directly on the player’s device. No cloud, no latency, no token costs.

Our vision is to make adaptive storytelling a native part of every game engine. LoreWeaver has secured initial seed funding, runs paid pilots with indie studios, and is preparing for a €1M+ funding round. Current team: 5 members, including CEO and CTO.

You’ll lead development of the Unreal Engine 5 plug-in and bridge our language-model runtime with live gameplay systems. Working closely with the CEO and CTO, you’ll turn cutting-edge LLM research into production-ready game-engine tools.

This role can be a founding role, but it doesn’t have to be. That will depend on personality, domain expertise, experience, team fit, and your own preference. If you want deep ownership and you’re a strong match, we’re open to a co-founder path. If you prefer to join as a senior engineer first, that’s equally valid. We can grow scope and ownership over time based on mutual fit and results.

We’re not looking for someone who just “knows Unreal.” We’re looking for a builder with taste and grit.

You might be a fit if you:

• Have broad, battle-tested UE5 experience and enjoy being the person who can “make it real.”
• Are a UE5 generalist: C++, gameplay programming, technical design, a bit of UI, dialogue systems, blackboard & behaviour trees, and setting up animation, whatever the product needs.
• Have built UE plugins before (including custom Blueprint nodes) and care about clean interfaces and developer experience.
• Like hard problems where the solution isn’t obvious, the docs aren’t enough, and the benchmark is “does it feel instant and reliable in-game?”
• Are in a stable enough life situation to take a real startup adventure. High ownership, high impact, high upside.

Bonus points if you:

• Have low-level graphics/performance experience (render thread, memory, profiling, tight budgets).
• Love games beyond the code: you’ve played and analysed RPGs/sims/narrative-driven titles, and you also enjoy board games and TTRPGs.  You understand systems, agency, pacing, and consequences.

• Lead implementation of the LoreWeaver plug-in for Unreal Engine 5.
• Design and optimise C++ modules connecting UE5 gameplay systems (e.g., Behavior Trees, Niagara, Data Assets) to local LLM inference back-ends.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to refine on-device inference, caching, and fine-tuning pipelines.
• Ensure seamless data exchange between Designer and Runtime (XML / JSON / UE assets).

• Expert knowledge of Unreal Engine 5: C++, Blueprints, and plug-in architecture.
• Experience building plugins and tooling (including custom nodes / editor workflow improvements).
• Strong gameplay-system understanding. Able to reason about loops, logic, state, and data flow.
• Deep experience with performance optimisation, memory management, and cross-platform builds.
• Ability to work independently and ship stable, maintainable code under startup conditions.

• Experience with TTRPGs (e.g., D&D, Pathfinder) and board games—understands systems, pacing, and player agency.
• Bonus if you’ve created fan-made mods, expansions, or edits for video or board games.
• Avid reader of fiction and lover of narrative craft.
• Must have played and analysed open-world, RPG, simulation, and other narrative-driven games.
• Enjoys tinkering with systems to optimise outcomes, both in code and in gameplay.

• Familiarity with other engines (Unity, Godot, etc.) or multi-engine integration.
• Experience implementing narrative systems or tools (Articy, Arcweave, Yarn Spinner, Ink, etc.).
• Basic understanding of math and statistics (vectors, matrices, probability, interpolation).
• Familiarity with Python for ML or tooling integration.
• Experience with quantisation, fine-tuning, or RAG pipelines for small-to-mid LLMs.
• Interest in procedural storytelling, agent systems, or simulation design.

• Senior Engineer track: immediate hands-on impact, clear ownership of the UE5 plug-in, equity included; scope can expand over time.
• Founding track (optional): for people who want maximum ownership and responsibility; co-founder title and larger equity possible, based on fit and preference.

• Build at the frontier where AI, storytelling, and game development converge.
• Work with a tight-knit team moving fast, building real product with real pilots and investor traction.
• Shape the technical direction of an Unreal integration that can become foundational for narrative AI workflows.
• Opportunity to contribute to experiments and publications as part of the LoreWeaver R&D team.

Additional Benefits: Flexible hours, remote work tools, learning stipend for conferences/courses, and 25 days of paid leave per year. Health insurance and relocation support available post-funding.

We encourage applications from all backgrounds, especially underrepresented groups in tech and gaming. You do not need to meet every requirement.

Send your resume, portfolio/GitHub, and a brief note on why you’re excited about narrative AI to rijk@loreweaver.ink. We’ll respond within 1 week. Ideal start: Immediate/ASAP. No agencies, please.