Unreal Generalist Real Time Advancements
Sphere Entertainment Co. (NYSE: SPHR) is a premier live entertainment and media company. The Company includes Sphere, a next-generation entertainment medium powered by cutting-edge technologies to redefine the future of entertainment. The first Sphere venue in Las Vegas opened in September 2023. In addition, the Company includes MSG Networks, which operates two regional sports and entertainment networks, MSG Network and MSG Sportsnet, as well as a direct-to-consumer and authenticated streaming product, MSG+, delivering a wide range of live sports content and other programming. More information is available at sphereentertainmentco.com.
Who are we hiring?
The Unreal Generalist (Real-Time Advancements) is a hands-on technical artist / generalist responsible for building, deploying, and operating Unreal-based real-time content for the Sphere Media Plane and associated live-event systems. Reporting to the Director Real-Time Advancements, you will support day-to-day development and show execution across Unreal Engine projects, Disguise-based playback, and clustered rendering systems (nDisplay). You will work closely with engineering, production, and external vendors to help translate creative requirements into stable, performant, and repeatable real-time workflows suitable for high-visibility live events.
This role requires strong practical Unreal experience, comfort operating in production environments, and the discipline to build systems that survive rehearsal-to-show constraints. The ideal candidate has prior live-event experience, understands show-control realities (latency, sync, redundancy, failover), hands-on experience with Notch, and can troubleshoot quickly under time-sensitive pressure.
What will you do?
- Build and maintain Unreal Engine scenes, levels, lighting, materials, and Blueprints in support of real-time show content and interactive pipelines.
- Configure and support cluster rendering workflows using nDisplay (and related Unreal multi-machine synchronization concepts) for large-format playback systems.
- Collaborate with the Director and team to integrate Unreal output with Disguise RenderStream (workflows including configuration, synchronization, and show-playback coordination).
- Optimize real-time performance for stable show execution: profiling, content budgets, frame-time management, LOD strategy, texture/memory discipline, and runtime debugging.
- Support live-event operations: assist during rehearsals and show runs, troubleshoot issues rapidly, and execute deployment/checklist procedures to ensure reliable performance.
- Partner with creative, production, and vendors to translate show requirements into implementable Unreal solutions; communicate tradeoffs and constraints clearly.
- Contribute to pipeline hygiene: documentation, project organization, version control practices, reusable templates, and runbooks for repeatable deployment.
What do you need to succeed?
- 5–7+ years professional experience with Unreal Engine in real-time production environments; live events, or large-scale installations strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated experience supporting or operating real-time content in time-critical live settings (rehearsal/show cadence, cueing, iteration under pressure).
- Practical familiarity with Disguise show-production workflows and the realities of large-scale playback/synchronization.
- Hands-on experience with nDisplay and/or multi-machine rendering concepts (cluster sync, genlock considerations, frame pacing, distributed deployment).
- Strong grasp of real-time performance fundamentals and optimization workflows inside Unreal (profiling tools, asset/perf budgeting, stability practices).
- Ability to diagnose and communicate issues quickly and methodically across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Willingness to travel and work evenings/weekends during deployment and show periods as required.
- Basic scripting or tools mindset (Python, Blueprint tooling, editor utility widgets) to improve workflow efficiency.
- Experience with Notch (or comparable real-time compositing / generative content toolsets) in live workflows is favored.
- Familiarity with common live-event/LED ecosystem components: LED processors, signal routing, media I/O, timecode, sync/genlock, networking basics.
- Comfort with DCC workflows and interchange (e.g., Houdini/C4D/Maya/Blender), including asset prep for real-time constraints.
- Experience with Perforce (or comparable source control for Unreal), and with structured build/deployment practices is preferred.
Special Requirements
- Development weeks follow standard business hours; however, the role requires oversight of show deployments that will involve travel, evening/weekend availability, and occasional long days on-site.
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