Lead Platform Engineer - Infrastructure & Backend

Description

The company is a large independent mobile games maker with more than 2,500 people across 12 studios. It has won several awards, and its titles hold top chart spots worldwide and reach over 25 million daily active users.

This role works with a San Francisco publisher that helps mobile developers get their games found by players worldwide. Since launching in 2018, it has pushed 90% of its games into the Top 10 of the App Store and Google Play, and 16 games have reached first place on the US App Store Top Free chart.

The team builds and runs the technical base for the publisher's games, analytics, internal products and web services. The role mixes leadership with hands-on engineering across AWS, data, backend and game services, and web infrastructure.

You will keep critical systems reliable while looking ahead for chances to improve technology across the organization.

Success means clear technical direction, projects owned from idea through rollout, and steadily better systems for the games and the teams that use them.

Interviews may use AI tools for note-taking and summaries, only for recruiters and interviewers. People make all candidate evaluations and hiring decisions.

Responsibilities

• Run the AWS environment end to end, covering architecture, reliability, monitoring, security and cost.
• Build automation, CI/CD, observability and operating practices across the cloud platform.
• Design and deliver upgrades to cloud infrastructure and shared services.
• Support hosting and infrastructure for internal products, websites, APIs and other services.
• Own the infrastructure behind the analytics stack, including Snowflake and high-volume game event pipelines.
• Raise the reliability, performance, scale and cost efficiency of the data platform.
• Partner with Analytics and BI to develop the underlying data platform.
• Design and implement changes as data and analytics needs grow.
• Own shared backend services, APIs, game servers and live game infrastructure.
• Design and build backend systems with the team.
• Shape architecture and hosting approaches for services used across the games.
• Help studios and internal teams integrate with the publisher's backend systems.
• Create and own the team's technical roadmap.
• Lead engineers while staying involved in architecture, implementation, code reviews and hard technical problems.
• Spot technical problems and opportunities early and move them forward.
• Turn unclear business and technical problems into clear options, recommendations and execution plans.
• Build working relationships with Engineering, Analytics, Product, QA, Solutions and partner studios.
• Carry projects through rollout and afterwards, including monitoring, feedback, adoption and iteration.

Requirements

• A solid software engineering background, including building and running production systems.
• Strong cloud infrastructure experience, ideally on AWS.
• Strong backend and distributed systems experience.
• Experience with modern data infrastructure and high-volume data pipelines.
• Experience with infrastructure as code, CI/CD, monitoring, automation and cloud cost management.
• Experience leading engineers and owning technical roadmaps.
• Comfortable working across code, infrastructure, architecture and production systems.
• Sound technical judgment and the ability to make decisions across several engineering areas.
• Strong ownership and follow-through from first idea through launch, measurement, feedback and iteration.
• Able to spot opportunities and drive improvements before everything is fully defined.
• Strong communication with both technical and non-technical teams.
• Experience working with distributed teams and external development studios.
• Experience in mobile gaming, consumer mobile products, AdTech or another high-scale environment.
• Experience running live game services or other highly available backend systems.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, Kafka or similar event infrastructure, and modern observability tools.
• Experience with Snowflake optimization and large-scale analytics workloads.
• Snowflake experience is strongly preferred.

Conditions

Remote work is open to candidates based in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington.

Candidates based in Dallas work hybrid with the Dallas studio, in the office four days a week, Monday to Thursday.

The anticipated base salary is $150,000 to $185,000.

Pay is decided individually based on skills, experience, education, training, licenses and certifications where applicable, as well as business and organizational needs. The final package depends on the specific position offered.

The company is an equal-opportunity employer and considers all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status, or other legally protected characteristics.

Benefits

• Flexible discretionary time off in addition to bank holidays.
• Generous 401k match, discretionary bonuses and competitive salaries.
• Comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage.
• An Employee Assistance Program offering confidential support whenever you need it.
• Ongoing professional development opportunities.
• Generous parental leave and a family-friendly culture.
• Yearly on-site company events celebrating achievements and team spirit.