EA SPORTS is one of the leading sports entertainment brands in the world, with top-selling videogame franchises, award-winning interactive technology, fan programs, and cross-platform digital experiences. EA SPORTS creates connected experiences that ignite the emotion of sport through industry-leading sports video games, including EA SPORTS FC™, Madden NFL, NHL®, and UFC.
EA SPORTS FC represents the future of football entertainment, connecting millions of players around the world through innovative gameplay and online experiences. Join us as we continue building the world's largest interactive football platform.
As a Senior Online Software Engineer (Technical Lead), you will provide technical leadership for the Online engineering team supporting EA SPORTS FC.
You will act as the technical lead for a broader engineering organization of approximately 20 engineers while directly managing a smaller team of approximately five software engineers. You'll partner closely with the Technical Director and Lead Architect to execute the technical vision for our online systems, ensuring they remain performant, scalable, reliable, and maintainable.
This role is ideal for an experienced C++ engineer who enjoys solving challenging real-time systems problems, mentoring engineers, and leading technical execution without being the primary architect for the organization.
Working closely with Production, Design, QA, Platform, and central technology teams, you'll help deliver the online experiences that power one of the world's largest sports franchises.
Responsibilities
- Provide technical leadership for the Online engineering organization, helping guide execution across a team of approximately 20 engineers while directly managing a team of approximately five.
- Partner closely with the Technical Director and Lead Architect to execute the long-term technical vision for Online systems.
- Lead development of large-scale real-time online systems including multiplayer networking, matchmaking, sessions, platform integration, and live services.
- Mentor engineers through technical coaching, code reviews, design discussions, and day-to-day collaboration.
- Review technical designs and help solve complex C++ engineering problems involving networking, multithreading, synchronization, performance, and distributed systems.
- Drive engineering quality through strong coding practices, testing, maintainability, documentation, and technical reviews.
- Collaborate with backend, cloud, platform, and infrastructure teams to integrate shared services into game systems.
- Ensure Online systems meet high standards for performance, reliability, scalability, security, and player experience.
- Identify technical risks early and work with cross-functional partners to develop practical solutions.
- Support production, launch, and live operations, helping the team investigate and resolve complex technical issues.
- Foster a collaborative engineering culture focused on technical excellence, accountability, continuous improvement, and player-first thinking.
Qualifications
Please note that you do not need to meet every qualification to be considered. If your experience closely matches most of the requirements, we encourage you to apply.
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Extensive professional experience developing high-performance C++ applications.
- Experience developing large-scale real-time software systems.
- Experience building multiplayer, networking, online, or distributed systems.
- Experience leading technical execution for engineering teams, including mentoring engineers, reviewing technical designs, and driving engineering best practices.
- Previous experience managing or mentoring engineers, including direct management experience or demonstrated technical leadership.
- Strong understanding of:
- Modern C++
- Multithreading and concurrency
- Client/server architecture
- Networking fundamentals
- Performance optimization
- Debugging complex systems
- Experience collaborating with backend service teams and integrating cloud-based services into large software systems.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate across engineering, production, QA, design, and technical leadership.
Bonus:
- Professional experience developing AAA video games
- Experience shipping and supporting multiplayer or live service products.
- Experience working with modern game engines such as Frostbite, Unreal Engine, Unity, or proprietary engines.
- Experience working with Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo platforms.
- Familiarity with backend services, cloud infrastructure, APIs, and live operations.
- Experience with dedicated servers, matchmaking systems, telemetry, and online platform services.
- Experience using Perforce, Git, or similar version control systems.