Build, optimise, and scale backend services powering real-time multiplayer gameplay
Work with GKE, Helm, and Kubernetes to manage deployments and autoscaling for stateful game servers
Improve observability: monitoring dashboards, alerting (Prometheus/Grafana or GCP Cloud Monitoring), and incident response
Scale distributed databases (MongoDB, PostgreSQL) under high concurrent load
Optimise Kafka event streaming for player actions, game state, and inter-service communication
Identify and resolve bottlenecks before they become player-facing problems
Improve resilience and prevent cascading failures across services
Collaborate on architectural decisions with a small, senior engineering team

Hands-on experience with Kubernetes (ideally GKE) in production
Real experience scaling distributed systems under load.
Worked with at least some of: MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis, pub/sub systems
Comfortable with monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, or equivalent)
Infrastructure-as-code experience (Terraform, Helm)
Self-directed.

What Sets You Apart

Experience with game backends or real-time multiplayer systems
Passion for MMO gaming experiences and understanding of MMO products in the market.
Worked with stateful server architectures (dedicated game servers)
Experience with custom game server orchestration on Kubernetes
Familiarity with Istio service mesh
Previous work at a game studio, especially on live service/MMO titles
A passion for the unique problems presented when operating a large scale MMO like this.

100% remote, must overlap significantly with UK (GMT/BST) hours.
Contract role, 4-8 weeks initially with extension likely post-launch
Full-time preferred, flexible for exceptional candidates
Competitive salary / monthly rate.
Become a valued member of our close-knit, passionate indie team of 25.
Play a key role in creating a groundbreaking virtual world that will captivate and welcome millions of players.

Backend Server Engineer – GCP

Key skills