Senior/Principal Online Programmer

Are you an experienced Backend Engineer looking to take on large-scale, global gaming challenges?

This is an exciting opportunity to join a world-leading international games publisher that partners with top studios to deliver high-quality gaming experiences to millions of players worldwide.

The role...

You’ll work closely with global development teams to design, optimise, and maintain the backend systems that power large-scale online games. Your focus will be on ensuring stability, scalability, and low latency across key systems such as matchmaking, real-time battles, and data synchronisation. You’ll also play a vital role in cross-team collaboration - working with partner studios to solve complex technical challenges and enhance backend performance across multiple titles.

What you'll be doing:

• Provide technical support for major international game projects by analysing backend server architecture, data storage, and network communication.
• Develop and maintain online services such as login, matchmaking, multiplayer systems, and data synchronisation.
• Ensure the reliability and scalability of backend systems to support global player access.
• Collaborate with development teams across time zones to optimise and implement technical solutions.
• Lead and contribute to technical discussions and documentation that drive best practices and innovation.

What we're looking for:

• 8+ years of backend development experience, including 5+ years in the gaming industry.
• A degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Expertise in at least one major programming language, such as C++ or Golang.
• Strong experience building high-performance, high-concurrency, and highly available systems.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills across global teams.
• Familiarity with distributed systems, microservices, and message queues such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.
• Hands-on experience with SQL and NoSQL databases, including performance tuning.
• Knowledge of game backend architecture, including matchmaking and real-time multiplayer systems.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Proficiency with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, Kubernetes, and Ansible.

Bonus skills:

• Experience developing with Unreal Engine.
• Proficiency in Mandarin Chinese (not required but beneficial).
• Understanding of service discovery tools such as Etcd or ZooKeeper.

If you’re a passionate Backend Engineer eager to tackle complex, global-scale challenges and help shape the future of online gaming experiences, this could be the perfect opportunity for you. Apply now, or contact Ryan Templeman - rt@skillsearch.com

Years of experience and salary levels are shown purely as a guide. We will only consider applications from candidates that can demonstrate the skills or experience required for the role.

Please be aware that while we would love to respond to every application we receive, due to high numbers we cannot guarantee this. We do however appreciate any time you invest into the application and will make sure to get in touch should anything in future more closely fit your skillset.