Lead Backend Engineer, thatgamecompany
More information about location
Video game studio
Open for applications
Video game studio
101-200 employees
Open for applications
More information about location
101-200 employees
Company mission
To expand the range of emotional experiences possible in video games, so that it can be enjoyed and loved by people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds.
Role
Who you are
- 8+ years experience working on the back-end for an MMO or high-volume, distributed, low-latency web services
- 5+ years experience leading geographically distributed remote teams
- 3+ years experience collaborating with offshore partner teams
- Fluency in both a functional language such as Erlang/Elixir and a multi-paradigm language such as Golang. You realize languages are just tools and you are already fluent in at least these two types
- Experience with Kubernetes, Helm, and Docker
- Have strong, informed opinions on the different approaches to managing network communication, resource scaling, automated deployment, security, reliability, and data tracking/analysis
- Be familiar with (and have passion for) testing patterns. We are behind the curve with automated testing and aim to get ahead of it
- Be proficient with Linux, container-native development and orchestration, CI/CD, GitOps, and debugging in network environments
- Have a thorough understanding of the tradeoffs involved in building highly available, scalable systems, caching strategies, and distributed systems
Desirable
- Sharable hobby projects relevant to the role, eg: a game engine, a distributed container-based app, a multiplayer game using an existing engine
- Experience with UDP, bit-level serialization, delta compression, and other techniques for developing efficient network code for real time games
- Our custom game engine is written in C++; the more familiarity you have with performant C++, the better
- Have experience with both relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis)
What the job involves
- For “Sky: Children of the Light”, thatgamecompany has developed a real-time, multiplayer game server system capable of handling a massive amount of concurrent users
- Providing a reliable and low latency experience for our players is a priority
- We build, test, and maintain systems for account and login, resource scaling, seamless matchmaking, and live updates
- We need your help developing, scaling and improving these mission critical systems so that we can continue providing impactful multiplayer experiences to people around the globe
- Work with your peers to design and implement large-scale, highly available backend microservices that serve millions of concurrent players. Aim for zero downtime
- Monitor system health and quickly respond to any failures or glitches to deliver a smooth online experience to players worldwide
- Improve quality through code reviews, expanded test coverage, technical post-mortems, improved documentation
- Encourage collaboration and domain knowledge sharing; reducing bus factor is a feature
- Work and iterate very closely with members of our (distributed, remote) Gameplay, Engine, and Ops teams
- Design testable, flexible features & systems that can withstand frequent changes to functional and performance requirements (this is a live game with a lot of new content, nothing is static!)
- Deliver! More specifically, strike a deliberate balance between speed and quality
- Lead and provide technical guidance to peers and juniors.
Our take
Thatgamecompany is a video studio that has built popular and emotional game worlds including Sky and Journey. On a mission to elevate games as a legitimate form of art, it stands out not only for the emotional quality of its products, but for appealing to people of varying ages, identities and backgrounds with a single world.
The success of Sky, which has now been downloaded at least 200M times and has nearly 7M daily active players, led to an impressive funding round in 2022. This funding has been invested into growing its development team and organization infrastructure.
As part of this investment, the company is adding Pixar co-founder, Ed Catmull, as principal adviser on creative culture and strategic growth. When considering the incomparable success of his previous ventures, this will likely set Thatgamecompany on a significant growth trajectory.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
19% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Mar 2022
$160m
LATE VC
Jul 2019
$6m
SERIES C
Total funding: $196.1m
Company benefits
- Medical, dental, vision
- 401k
- Paid time off
Company HQ
Downtown, Santa Monica, CA
Leadership
Jenova Chen
(CEO & Creative Director)Previously served as a Game Designer for Electronic Arts Maxis and for USC Game Innovation Lab. Experience as an Art Director & Lead Artist for Annenberg Communication Center.
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