People Can Fly is one of the leading independent AAA games development studios with an international team of hundreds of talented individuals working from offices located in Poland, UK, US, and Canada, and from all over the world thanks to our remote work programs.

Founded in 2002, we made our mark on the shooter genre with titles such as Painkiller, Bulletstorm, Gears of War: Judgment, and Outriders. We are one of the most experienced Unreal Engine studios in the industry and we are expanding it with in-house solutions called PCF Framework.

Our creative teams are currently working on several exciting titles: Gemini is our new project being developed with Square Enix; Bifrost, Victoria and Dagger are projects we're growing in the self-publishing model. We also have one project in the concept phase – Red; as well as two projects in VR technology – Green Hell VR and Thunder - a new project based on one of the IPs from the Group’s portfolio.

With over 20 years of experience, PCF sets out to explore new horizons. We aim to combine our expertise with creativity of the best and most forward-thinking talents in the industry to work together on the new generation of action games for the global gaming community.

If you feel yourself able to deliver as nobody else, take ownership of your projects, and are ready to leave a mark on a game you work on, apply now!

PCF is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer who will build scalable, distributed server-side systems that provide our live service games with features such as game server orchestration, user account management, authentication, player inventory, cross-platform squads, running events, matchmaking and more. Building systems with security, scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency in mind is a must.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you are responsible for implementing backend services for gameplay features in our ambitious AAA online games. You can expect to collaborate across teams to find solutions to problems, designing performant and scalable systems by using your experience in developing game-related backend services in a microservice architecture, and familiarity with on-premise and managed cloud solutions.

Our ideal candidate has a love for games and the ability to collaborate with our game development and publishing teams in order to build online services to power games at scale. We seek versatile engineers with strong judgment, great execution, and a willingness to take on new responsibilities.

Responsibilities:

•  Create backend services powering multiplayer metagame features (matchmaking, game economy, player progression, etc.) with scalability, data integrity, security, and cost in mind.
• Create reusable, performant, secure libraries supporting all the services running on our platform.
• Ensure the robustness of the solution producing services that have high reliability and uptime.
• Ensure developed features are easily transferable and reusable across a range of game projects.
• Collaborate with other engineers and work closely with cross-functional teams (SRE, SDK, SDET, PM, etc) in a global environment across multiple time zones.
• Be a part of the full product cycle for our products, from design and testing to deployment and supporting our LIVE environments and our game team customers.
• Assist game/LiveOps designers express their needs in terms of online services; give them feedback and help them adjust their designs to avoid common security and scalability pitfalls.
• Assist game programmers in integrating the services in the client and game server.
• Write and maintain documentation for services, their libraries and APIs.
• Advocate for best practices within the engineering team.
• Mentor and supervise junior programmers in their duties.

• Typically: 5+ years of experience in the production of high-scalability online backend services. Domain doesn't have to be video games as long as user numbers are high: scale matters above all else.
• Game-specific experience is beneficial but not mandatory.
• Other relevant domains to look into: content distribution, ad-tech, news, mobile gaming, finance.
• FAANG (or adjacent) experience is highly sought after.
• Experience with developing high traffic and highly scalable services serving millions of users.
• Excellent knowledge of algorithms, data structures, performance, and multi-threaded programming techniques.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes and at least one cloud-native environment (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform...)
• Knowledge of continuous integration and continuous delivery principles.
• Familiarity with Kotlin, Go or Rust programming languages. Alternately: mastery of at least one of: Python, Ruby, C#, Scala, Java or Kotlin and willingness to learn Kotlin and Go.
• Knowledge of SQL, NoSql, and memory databases, ie: Postgres, MangoDB and Redis or similar with an emphasis on scalability and resource efficiency.
• C/C++ skills: nice to have (not necessarily engine programmer-level; should be able to find, debug and fix their way around a C/C++ codebase).
• Understanding of client-server methodology.
• Deep understanding of scalability, security and maintainability considerations.
• Ability to write secure, reliable, understandable code.

What we offer:

• A competitive salary and performance-based annual bonuses.
• Private medical healthcare (Vitality) and BUPA dental insurance for PCF's employees and their families.
• Access to wellbeing platform - Gympass for employees and family members.
• Access to Worksmile - cafeteria program.
• Online Polish and English language classes.
• Access to the pension scheme.
• Flexible working hours.
• Free virtual health and mental wellbeing sessions included in the plan for members and their dependents.
• Personal development opportunities and ability to work in a global environment.
• Work in a creative team with people full of passion for what they do.