Lead Systems Software Engineer

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Electronic Arts creates next‑level entertainment experiences that inspire players and fans around the world. Here, everyone is part of the story, part of a community that connects across the globe. A place where creativity thrives, new perspectives are invited, and ideas matter. A team where everyone makes play happen.

The EA SPORTS UFC franchise delivers the spectacle, intensity, and authenticity of MMA to tens of millions of players worldwide. Our team is on a mission to become the world’s greatest fighting game. If you’re passionate about building immersive digital entertainment, this is the role of a lifetime.

As a Lead Systems Software Engineer, you will help define, deliver, and evolve the foundational engine and technology systems that enable performance, scalability, and creative freedom across all domains, gameplay, animation, rendering, online, front‑end, and tools. This role blends hands‑on engineering with technical leadership. You’ll work on challenging problems while also taking broad technical ownership, collaborating across teams, and enabling others to succeed.

You will be working on a hybrid model, 3 days a week out of our EA Studio in Burnaby, British Columbia.

• Act as a trusted technical partner across the team, helping engineers understand platform capabilities, engine behavior, and system‑level trade‑offs.
• Enable other domains to design and ship better features by providing guidance, solutions, and shared systems that scale across the game.
• Help define and drive engine, codebase, platform, automation, and release strategies in partnership with technical leadership.
• Drive improvements in performance, memory usage, load times, stability, and developer workflows through well‑designed foundational systems.
• Take responsibility for the successful delivery of systems initiatives, including planning, risk identification, and execution.
• Define, track, and uphold technical KPIs related to performance, memory, stability, and maintainability across platforms.
• Ensure systems land predictably, scale effectively, and support both development and live service needs.
• Build strong working relationships with other franchise systems teams and central engine teams, sharing solutions, best practices, and lessons learned.
• Bring insights and improvements back to the team to continuously raise the technical bar.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including work on large‑scale or performance‑sensitive systems.
• Strong experience with C++ and large, complex codebases.
• Solid understanding of systems‑level concepts such as performance, memory management, multithreading, and platform constraints.
• Experience working in or alongside game engines or real‑time systems.
• Proven ability to deliver complex technical systems end‑to‑end with quality and predictability.
• A collaborative, support‑oriented mindset with the ability to communicate clearly across disciplines.

• Exposure to tooling, build systems, automation, or multi‑platform development.
• Interest in growing technical leadership responsibilities and influencing long‑term strategy.
• Experience or interest in using AI tools to accelerate development, testing, or operations workflows.

• Play a foundational role in a franchise enjoyed by tens of millions of players globally.
• Influence nearly every technical domain without being confined to a single feature area.
• Help define long‑term engine, platform, and systems strategy.
• Grow as a technical leader while remaining close to hands‑on engineering.
• Work with a collaborative, passionate team building one of the world’s premier fighting games.

The ranges listed below are what EA in good faith expects to pay applicants for this role in these locations at the time of this posting. If you reside in a different location, a recruiter will advise on the applicable range and benefits. Pay offered will be determined based on a number of relevant business and candidate factors (e.g., education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic…