Senior Backend Engineer

Special Move is working with an ambitious and growing mobile game studio Tag Games based in Dundee, Scotland. Who have a 14 year legacy of making mobile games for some of the biggest brands on the planet.

This year Tag is embarking on its most ambitious and exciting title yet, developing a brand new cross platform IP in partnership with a world renowned publisher. We are looking for passionate new people to join their team on their quest to forge a place in players' hearts.

Tags culture is collaborative and relaxed. They encourage feedback and support each other to solve problems - always striving to be the best they can be. They are driven by a passion for quality and delivering outstanding products. If this feels like a studio where you can thrive and grow then we have a variety of roles available, both in their Dundee studio and remote. It would be great to have you join their team!  

The Role:

Tag Games Studios is on the hunt for an experienced Senior Game Server Engineer who will play an instrumental part in creating a brand new world-leading, cross platform IP played by millions of gamers. You will be part of a skilled core server side team, who are tasked with the creation of highly scalable systems built for consistency and low latency. The size and dynamic of this team will grant you considerable responsibility and autonomy in tasks and the design and implementation of our architecture.

Here's what you will be doing:

• Form the core of our Game Server Engineering team. We’re developing an incredible cross platform product.
• Develop a deep understanding of the infrastructure and services that will be used to run an MMO game service.
• Planning and reporting project milestones and timescales on a continuous basis to all those involved.
• Work closely with the rest of the Engineering team, defining and implementing key technical goals as well as goals and concepts to bring teams to the next level
• Assist in the construction of platforms, systems and networking infrastructure using your strong background in distributed systems, OS/kernel, network system design, and large-scale storage systems.
• Create a culture of high quality and high performance within the Game Server Engineering team and build low latency solutions that are highly scalable and consistent
• Jump in to help the teams with troubleshooting and research of technical solutions
• Implement tools that empower our Game-Design teams to create new and exciting gameplay experiences
• Load test, monitor, profile & optimise game servers
• Prioritise technical tasks and work with the team to plan for development
• Maintain a good awareness of technological changes to help future proof the live service to operate effectively.
• Be a part of the rotating on-call schedule once the game is live

To do this job, you will need:

• Professional experience as a senior member of a Backend as a Service team, ideally for 2+ years.
• Experience in developing highly available back-end systems and servers for large-scale games or high-traffic web systems.
• Experience building robust solutions with a test driven approach.
• Experience developing in Python, ideally using frameworks like Celery and Tornado.
• Strong knowledge of Unix-like operating systems.
• Experience with Redis (or other database systems), ORMs and migration scripts.
• Ability to write efficient low-latency, low-IO code.
• Good understanding of how to prevent intrusions, injections, cheating etc.
• Experience in Git.
• Good knowledge of networking i.e. TCP, HTTP, LB, NAT, WebSockets etc.
• Experience creating and working with a dockerized environment.

While not required, below are nice to have:

• Experience working in C#/Unity..
• AWS, Docker, Terraform, Kibana, Chef, Ansible.
• Experience with automated testing.
• Experience with stateful and stateless game server architectures.
• Good knowledge of shell scripting i.e. bash, zsh.
• Experience working with non-technical team members to find the best solution for design requirements.
• Experience developing in Go.

Special Move acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment