Lead Backend Engineer

Quick Facts

• Role: Lead Backend Engineer
• Focus: Backend leadership and hands-on ownership of production systems and reliability

Description

Lead and mentor a backend engineering team while contributing directly to critical-path backend systems. Own backend architecture evolution, reliability and service-level objectives, incident response, and infrastructure cost, partnering closely with cross-functional game teams to ship features aligned with the creative vision.

Responsibilities

• Manage, mentor, and grow backend engineers (goals, 1:1s, feedback, career development)
• Create hiring plans and lead technical interviews
• Define and improve team processes (planning, code review standards, on-call/bug triage, scoping/estimation)
• Review pull requests and unblock engineers on hard problems
• Evolve backend architecture and deliver production code on critical systems
• Own reliability practices, incident response, and infrastructure cost management
• Collaborate with game design, marketing, and production on feature scoping and alignment
• Partner with the Technical Director on a realistic technical roadmap
• Communicate engineering status, risks, and trade-offs to studio leadership

Requirements

• 6+ years of professional backend experience; games/live-service strongly preferred
• 2+ years of experience leading or directly managing engineers
• Strong Kotlin or Java skills
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Grafana, Terraform, and load-testing tools
• Hands-on experience scaling backend systems to a global audience, including debugging, monitoring, and alerting
• Solid grasp of software architecture and design patterns
• Cross-functional experience working on a shipped or in-development game
• High ownership and the ability to work effectively in a lean team
• Strong communication skills for explaining trade-offs to non-engineers and rallying the team
• Legal authorization to work in the US or Canada; no work-visa assistance
• Willingness to work within North American time zones (EST–PST)

Benefits

• Competitive salaries and pay transparency
• Stock options
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage (100% for individuals, 90% for dependents)
• Life insurance, short-term and long-term disability, and additional benefits
• 401(k) contributions (U.S.) / RRSP + DPSP contributions (Canada)
• Paid parental leave
• Fully distributed remote studio across North American time zones