Lead Game Services Engineer

2K • San Mateo, CA

14h • $169,100 - $250,280 • Remote

About The Position

31st Union is seeking a Lead Game Services Engineer to lead the team responsible for building and operating the studio’s hosted services. The role manages backend engineers in the US and EU, owns service and infrastructure architecture, and contributes code alongside the team. The position is the first point of contact for backend technical decisions and incidents and reports to the Director - Online Services. It is based in the San Mateo, California studio and is also open to fully remote candidates.

The role covers team leadership, architecture and development, releases and deployment, operations, and integration with platform services. The engineer leads backend planning and standards, designs and implements proprietary services, aligns backend work with studio releases, operates services and incident response, and integrates studio services with 2K and external platforms.

The studio is working on Project ETHOS, described as a free-to-play, third-person rogue-like hero shooter. The California starting pay range is $169,100–$250,280 per year. Compensation may also include a bonus and/or equity awards, along with medical, financial, and other benefits; specific plan participation details are provided if an offer is made. Visa sponsorship or assistance is not available, and candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without current or future employer sponsorship.

Requirements

• 10+ years of server-side development experience, complemented by a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience leading or managing backend engineers on a shipped AAA title, preferably a live-service or competitive multiplayer game.
• Fluency in C# and proficiency in Python or Go.
• Strong grasp of distributed systems, concurrency, and scalable service design.
• Hands-on experience with NoSQL databases such as MongoDB or DocumentDB, and with Redis.
• Experience deploying and operating production services on AWS.
• Ability to give direct, constructive feedback and invite feedback from others.
• Legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring current or future employer sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Kubernetes, Helm, and microservice architectures.
• Experience profiling and optimizing distributed systems, including database queries and service calls.
• Experience with real-time messaging such as MQTT and with API gateways.
• Experience with C++ and Unreal Engine.
• Experience with online game systems such as matchmaking, social, progression, commerce, and telemetry.
• Experience running a live title, including incident response, capacity planning, and cost management.

Responsibilities

• Manage the backend engineering team, including holding regular one-to-ones, setting goals, giving performance feedback, and leading hiring.
• Run backend team planning by maintaining the backlog, estimating work, and setting sprint priorities against the online services roadmap.
• Set engineering standards for code review, testing, documentation, and on-call readiness.
• Own the architecture of studio-hosted services and infrastructure, including service boundaries, data models, APIs, and deployment topology.
• Scope backend work for new game features.
• Write and review technical designs for new services and major changes.
• Implement and review proprietary studio backend services.
• Align the backend roadmap with the studio release schedule.
• Diagnose, fix, and deploy backend hotfixes through the studio hotfix process.
• Maintain continuous integration pipelines and deployment automation for services.
• Own monitoring, alerting, dashboards, runbooks, and incident reporting for studio services.
• Run the backend on-call rotation and act as first responder and escalation point for backend incidents.
• Load test services before major releases, resolve performance bottlenecks, and optimize service costs.
• Implement and test failover and disaster recovery for services and their data.
• Integrate studio proprietary services with 2K and external platform services.
• Debug cross-service issues with external engineering partners.

Benefits

• The total compensation package for employees in regular roles may include a bonus and/or equity awards.
• A full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits may be available; details depend on applicable plans and are provided if an offer is made.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior