Senior Backend Engineer, King
Activision Blizzard Media
1-4 days a week in office
Mobile games developer
Be an early applicant
Mobile games developer
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
1-4 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
At King, we’re Making the World Playful. Heard of Candy Crush? We’re the creators behind it. But we aren’t just crushing it with candies, we’re also behind Farm Heroes, Bubble Witch, Pet Rescue and loads of other sweet games.
Role
Who you are
- Do you want to build amazing high scale backend systems for Advertising using the latest technologies?
- Are you an excellent communicator who enjoys working with people from several different business units?
- Can you translate business needs into technical requirements and implementation?
- If you answered yes, then our Senior Backend Engineer role on our ads engineering team may be the right role for you!
- BA/BS degree in Computer Science, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience
- 7+ years of experience leading the development of high-performance microservices in Java
- Strong understanding of large-scale distributed backend systems
- Experience with AdTech platforms (e.g., AdServing, Demand Side Platform)
- Proficiency in NoSQL systems (e.g., DynamoDB, Cassandra, HBase)
- Experience in a cloud-based environment with GCP, Azure or AWS
- Expert knowledge in Java, JMeter, and performance engineering
- Experience with streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Flink)
- Experience in designing cohesive frontend and backend architecture
- Excellent interpersonal skills and proven ability to work in a collaborative team environment
- Ability to work independently with limited guidance
- You are passionate about a culture of learning and teaching. You love challenging yourself to constantly improve, and sharing your knowledge to empower others
- You like to take risks when looking for novel solutions to complex problems. If faced with roadblocks, you continue to reach higher to make greatness happen
- You care about solving big, systemic problems. You look beyond the surface to understand root causes so that you can build long-term solutions for the whole ecosystem
- You believe in not only serving customers but also empowering them by providing knowledge and tools
Desirable
- Knowledge and experience in CI/CD, test automation, Jenkins, Gradle, and related technologies
- Experience with open-source technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)
- Passion for usability, maintainability, and quality, with a focus on long-term solutions
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer in our Ads Engineering team, empowering groundbreaking mobile advertising technologies to create the next generation of our Ads Platform
- Your role involves designing and developing a highly scalable, available, and reliable Ads & Monetization platform capable of handling billions of requests daily
- You collaborate with architects and fellow engineers to craft backend systems while working closely with product and peer engineering teams on cross-functional projects
- In addition, you partner with DevOps engineers to ensure operational excellence and exhibit a genuine curiosity for mentoring junior engineers
- Design and develop a highly scalable, highly available, and highly reliable Advertising & Monetization platform handling billions of requests per day
- Understand the business requirements and translate them into the development/design tasks
- Collaborate with architects and engineers to craft and architect backend systems
- Partner with Product and peer engineering teams on multi-functional projects
- Work with DevOps engineers to ensure operational excellence
- Mentor and support junior engineers with a genuine interest in their development
- Choose the right technology stack to align with those use cases with scalability
- Develop alert & monitoring systems and procedures for faster disaster recovery
- Provide technical directions and mentor other specialists and engineers
Our take
Gaming is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, but many still view gaming as inconvenient, inaccessible, or niche. King solves that problem by designing mobile games with broad market appeal.
Since its launch, King has released more than 200 titles in 14 languages, including Candy Crush, Farm Heroes, Bubble Witch, Pet Rescue, and more. The company pioneered in-game spending, which allows it to monetize user interactions without charging them to buy the game. Titles such as Candy Crush are designed to be highly accessible to demographics that wouldn’t usually define themselves as “gamers”, including older users. King now boasts more than 200 million monthly active users, making it a clear market leader.
In 2016, King was bought by gaming giant Activision Blizzard, which has since been purchased by Microsoft. While the company still operates with a high degree of independence, it has greatly profited from the financial and marketing support of its parent corporation. This support has been instrumental in enabling King to maintain its competitiveness in the constantly evolving mobile gaming industry.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Employee endorsements
Focus on employee wellbeing
"There is an amazing worklife balance that the company puts an emphasis on. On top of that there are amazing benefits to take part in, for example in..."
Funding (2 rounds)
Sep 2005
$43m
SERIES A
Jun 2005
$41m
EARLY VC
Total funding: $84m
Company benefits
- 🏥 Private medical, dental, critical illness and pension plans
- 🌴 Generous paid holidays, with additional time off close down between 25th December and the New Year
- 🥯 Next-level offices that provide numerous creative spaces as well as free breakfast, snacks, and drinks
- 🎒 Exclusive, free goodies
- 🏳️🌈 Four employee-led diversity-focused networks and other community groups that raise awareness
- ❤️ Reimbursements for both physical and mental health-related activities. Some offices also have their own onsite gyms.
- 🏅 Community Day, charity donation matching, free and discounted Activision Blizzard games, and our Royal Recognition Awards rewarding commitment of long-serving Kingsters
Company values
- Fun & Friendly 🧡 We create an inclusive environment where everyone can belong. We build trust, we're supportive and demanding in everything we do, and we're not afraid to have fun along the way
- Care & Craft 🤗 We put our heart and soul into everything we do - and we do it for our players. It takes all Kingsters, contributing in different ways, to craft and operate brilliant mass-appeal games
- Humble & Open 📖 We treat each other as equals. We seek and give feedback, we listen, we learn, and we're honest with ourselves and others
- Fast & Fluid ⏩ We are responsive and embrace change. We take smart risks, are always ready to dust ourselves off, learn fast, and try again
- Creative Champions 🏅 We are curious about our players and we drive innovation in big and small ways to delight them every day. We boldly seek new ways of thinking to unleash creativity
- Passion & Performance 📈 Our passion guides us to set ambitious goals for ourselves and each other. We hold each other accountable, see things through, and contribute to our sustainable growth
Company HQ
Soho, London, UK
Articles
Leadership
Tjodolf Sommestad
(President )President from February 2022. Previously served as King’s Chief Development Officer.
People progressing
Leading a data science team responsible for supporting performance marketing to make informed decisions with data
Joined as Senior Developer. Promoted to Engineering Manager after 2 years and is now leading two engineering teams in the Telemetry & Streaming domain.
Salary benchmarks
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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at King
Vikki Leach (Senior Director, DE&I)
- A great saga needs all sorts of heroes. At King, we share a passion for making the world playful. To achieve this, it takes people with different skills, experiences, and world views to work together.
- There’s no such thing as a typical gamer. That’s why we embrace and celebrate what makes us different rather than what makes us the same
- Our Employee Networks help us to stay connected as individuals and as a company; Kaleidoscope (ethnic, cultural, and national diversity), Royal Unicorns (LGBTQIA+), Women@King (crushing bias and equal opportunities) and CAN (collective abilities).
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