Principal Software Engineer - Character Technology

We're making a football game

We are developing a fair game, that is a reflection of football, rather than the football industry. We are creating a game that’s fun right away, driven by gameplay, and where mastery will lead to the most competitive esports scene. We want our game to be accessible from anywhere, on any platform and to anyone, without having to invest a fortune.

We aim to create a global community of players, representative of the world, free of toxicity, and where playing football games is enjoyable and convivial again, whether it’s for fun or at a high competitive level. We want to inspire every kid that plays football or video games and help them feel like they can bring out the best in them, in a respectful and safe league.

GOALS is for everyone, like football can and should be. It’s for the casuals and the pros. For the players, the managers, and the fans. For the creators and the fashionistas - whether you’re into perfecting your team's look, showing off your own style, or just admiring the creativity around you. GOALS is football. 

Read more about GOALS here.

Welcome to the engineering team

GOALS is building a cutting-edge, real-time character generation system that authentically represents the world's diverse ethnicities. Using Unreal Engine 5.5, we generate characters dynamically at runtime with a combination of joint scaling, blend shapes, and procedural materials. Our next steps include adding Metahuman facial animation and refining ethnicity-based customization.

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead this effort. This plays a critical role in shaping the technology behind our character pipeline. If you're passionate about procedural character generation, thrive in a highly technical and collaborative environment, and want to push the boundaries of digital representation, we’d love to hear from you.

At GOALS, you will...

• Lead the development of our runtime procedural character generation system in Unreal Engine 5.5.
• Implement and optimize character animation, skinning, and procedural character tools.
• Work closely with Tech Animators, Character Artists, Tech Artists, Rendering Engineers, and Cloud Engineers to develop an efficient, high-quality character pipeline.
• Collaborate with Rendering Engineers to integrate mesh and texture generation pipelines into our real-time systems.
• Oversee the integration of Metahuman facial animation and ethnicity-based procedural generation.
• Take ownership of core technology areas, ensuring high performance and scalability.

Ideally you have...

• 5+ years of professional experience in game technology, animation systems, or procedural character generation.
• Expert-level C++ and Unreal Engine experience, particularly in animation, skinning, and procedural asset generation.
• Strong understanding of character rendering, materials, and runtime asset optimization.
• Experience working in real-time character animation and procedural workflows.
• Good collaboration skills and experience working across disciplines (Tech Art, Rendering, Cloud Engineering).
• A self-driven, problem-solving mindset with a passion for high-quality character tech.

About the Employment

The position is permanent and you can work from our Stockholm office, hybrid or fully remote from anywhere in Europe. It is important that you are able to communicate unhindered in verbal/written English.

For this position, we do not offer relocation assistance.

In addition to opportunities for creative impact and professional growth, working at GOALS has many other benefits like occupational pension, 30 days PTO, flexible work hours, stock options and more. Learn more here.

Application

For this role, we would like you to include:

• LinkedIn profile, CV, or any other document that showcases your experience
• A link to your GitHub(if applicable)

We strongly encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel that you tick all the boxes. You just might be exactly what we need, even if we haven’t understood it yet. GOALS is still a young company and we change quickly. But one thing that never changes is our conviction that we need a diverse studio environment, filled with different perspectives and skills.

Read more about our recruitment process