Director of Backend Engineering

ZipRecruiter; England; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a dynamic team at a leading entertainment company as the Director of Backend Engineering. In this hybrid role, you'll lead a talented group in developing scalable backend systems for innovative gaming experiences. You'll drive the architectural decisions and foster a culture of continuous improvement within the engineering team.

Benefits

Healthcare coverage

Mental well-being support

Paid time off

Family leaves

Complimentary games

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in backend systems development.
• 5+ years in technical leadership roles managing engineering teams.
• Deep knowledge of cloud-based platforms and orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction of backend systems and live services.
• Mentor a team of backend engineers to promote growth.
• Collaborate with product and design teams for feature delivery.

Skills

C#

AWS

Kubernetes

SQL

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

CI/CD

Automated Testing

Microservices

Job description

Job Description

Description & Requirements

Electronic Arts creates next-level entertainment experiences that inspire players and fans around the world. Here, everyone is part of the story. Part of a community that connects across the globe. A place where creativity thrives, new perspectives are invited, and ideas matter. A team where everyone makes play happen.

The future of entertainment is interactive, and our Ventures Group plays an important role in this future by building content, culture, and community that take us Beyond Gaming. We empower audiences to Play, Create, Watch, and Connect across our amazing franchises and experiences, including The Sims, Madden NFL, EA SPORTS FC, Apex Legends, and Battlefield. We’re a multi-functional group, with world-class expertise in building fandom, driving interactive storytelling, and positioning our franchises at the centre of the broader entertainment ecosystem.

We are seeking a Director of Backend Engineering to lead and scale our backend systems powering next- social and gaming experiences. You will bring deep expertise in high-performance, cloud- services and lead a talented engineering team in delivering resilient, scalable platforms that support rapid innovation and global reach.

This is a hybrid based role, working 3 days in our Southam office.

Key Responsibilities:

• Drive the technical direction and architecture of backend systems supporting live services and social experiences.
  
• Lead and mentor a high-performing team of backend engineers, promoting technical excellence and growth.
  
• Drive engineering execution and prioritise scalable, secure, and performant system design.
  
• Collaborate closely with product, design, and frontend teams to deliver end-to-end features.
  
• Make architectural decisions across technologies including C#, Kubernetes, AWS, SQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB.
  
• Support our DevOps team with defining best practices and the overseeing of CI/CD pipelines as well as observability tools for backend operations.
  
• Foster a strong culture of agile development, code quality, and continuous improvement.
  

How Your Success Will Be Measured:

• System performance, uptime, and scalability across live production environments.
  
• Velocity and quality of backend feature delivery in alignment with product roadmaps.
  
• Engineering team health, retention, and technical development.
  
• Ability to support rapid iteration without compromising backend reliability or security.
  

What You Bring:

• 10+ years of experience in backend systems development, ideally with large-scale, cloud-based platforms.
  
• 5+ years in technical leadership roles, including managing backend-focused engineering teams.
  
• Deep knowledge of C#/.NET, Kubernetes orchestration, and AWS services.
  
• Strong experience with data storage technologies including relational (SQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB) databases.
  
• Experience with C++ is considered beneficial.
  
• Proven ability to balance fast feature delivery with building for long-term scalability and maintainability.
  
• Skilled in CI/CD, automated testing, service monitoring, and incident response.
  
• Familiarity with modern dev practices including trunk-based development and microservices architecture.
  
• Experience with Microsoft's Orleans framework is a bonus.
  

Soft Skills & Values:

• Collaborative leader with a passion for building innovative, high-impact products.
  
• Excellent communicator able to translate complex technical concepts into clear direction.
  
• Committed to building inclusive, high-performance teams that thrive on trust and autonomy.
  

About Electronic Arts

We’re proud to have an extensive portfolio of games and experiences, locations around the world, and opportunities across EA. We value adaptability, resilience, creativity, and curiosity. From leadership that brings out your potential, to creating space for learning and experimenting, we empower you to do great work and pursue opportunities for growth.

We adopt a holistic approach to our benefits programs, emphasizing physical, emotional, financial, career, and community wellness to support a balanced life. Our packages are tailored to meet local needs and may include healthcare coverage, mental well-being support, retirement savings, paid time off, family leaves, complimentary games, and more. We nurture environments where our teams can always bring their best to what they do.

Electronic Arts is an equal opportunity employer. All employment decisions are made without regard to , , , ancestry, , , or expression, , , genetic information, , , medical condition, , marital status, family status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We will also consider employment qualified applicants with criminal records in accordance with applicable law. EA also makes workplace accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities as required by applicable law.