Unreal 5 Physics Engineer UFC-style fighting game

Location: Hybrid / Remote Montreal QC Preferred

Employment Type: Full-Time
Reports To: CTO

Role Overview

Were seeking a seasoned Physics Simulation Engineer to develop and optimize the physical foundation of a next-generation UFC-style fighting game built in Unreal Engine 5.

You will own the design and implementation of real-time physics systems from ragdolls and collisions to grappling takedowns and secondary motion ensuring the action feels tactile believable and deeply responsive.

Youll collaborate across gameplay animation and AI teams to bring visceral realism and cinematic weight to every hit clinch and ground transition.

Core Responsibilities

Physics & Simulation Development

• Design implement and tune character-centric physics systems (rigid-body soft-body cloth and joint constraints).

• Extend Unreals Chaos Physics engine for advanced collision friction and joint behavior.

• Build hybrid systems combining physics simulation and animation control (active ragdolls partial procedural blending).

• Implement accurate hit reaction momentum transfer and impact dampening models for punches kicks and grapples.

• Develop custom constraints and solvers for ground fighting clinches and submissions.

• Integrate with animation and AI layers to synchronize motion physics and input.

• Prototype physics-assisted motion systems (e.g. limb reaction forces fatigue wobble ground contact deformation).

Runtime Integration & Optimization

• Profile and optimize physics update loops for 60 FPS (console and PC).

• Maintain stability under varying frame rates and network conditions (deterministic rollback support).

• Design LOD-based physics simplifications for off-camera fighters and background actors.

• Integrate physics debug visualization and profiling tools for QA and design teams.

Cross-Discipline Collaboration

• Work with Animation Engineers on blending procedural motion with authored animations.

• Collaborate with Gameplay on combat timing collision volumes and balance.

• Coordinate with Design and Art to define physical material behaviors surface responses and destruction triggers.

• Partner with AI/ML teams to drive adaptive responses based on physical state.

Required Qualifications

• 5 years professional experience in physics or gameplay engineering for real-time games.

• Deep expertise with Unreal Engine 4 / 5 and Chaos Physics (rigid-body cloth constraints collision channels).

• Proficiency in C and performance-critical multithreaded code.

• Strong foundation in classical mechanics kinematics and numerical simulation.

• Experience building or extending physics systems for character interactions (melee ragdoll vehicle or sports gameplay).

• Skilled in profiling debugging and optimizing for console hardware.

• Experience maintaining stability and determinism in physics simulations for networked play.

Preferred / Bonus Skills

• Experience building a physics simulation from scratch.

• Knowledge of procedural animation and hybrid active ragdoll systems.

• Familiarity with AI-driven physics blending or reinforcement-learning control.

• Experience with soft-body dynamics cloth and muscle simulation.

• Prior work on fighting sports or action titles emphasizing tactile collision and combat realism.

• Understanding of motion-matching or animation-physics co-simulation pipelines.

• GPU or compute-based physics experience (NVIDIA Flex PhysX or custom solvers).

Success Indicators (First 6-12 Months)

• High-fidelity impact takedown and ragdoll responses tuned for gameplay realism.

• Stable deterministic physics behavior across all platforms and network modes.

• Runtime cost within 1.5 ms/frame per character under heavy simulation load.

• Fully functional physics-animation blending system (active ragdoll / constraint solver / IK integration).

• Physics debug visualization and testbed maps adopted by design / QA teams.