Lead Backend Engineer

Wwshemi; United States; Remote; USD 196,000 - 203,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Life insurance

Paid parental leave

Competitive salaries

Job summary

Gardens Interactive, a fully remote game studio, is hiring a Lead Backend Engineer to mentor a growing team and own backend architecture for live-service titles. You will drive reliability, set technical roadmaps, and collaborate with design, production, and marketing to align engineering with creative goals.

You should bring 6+ years in backend development, 2+ years in leadership, and strong Kotlin/Java skills with Kubernetes, Grafana, and Terraform experience.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional backend experience, with games/live-service development preferred.
• 2+ years of direct team leadership or management experience.
• Strong Kotlin or Java skills; familiarity with Kubernetes, Grafana, Terraform, and load-testing tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of backend engineers; set goals and guide career development.
• Create hiring plans and interview candidates based on product needs.
• Own team processes: planning, code review standards, on-call/triage, estimation.
• Foster a healthy, high-trust engineering culture across the studio.

Skills

Backend development

Team leadership

Kotlin/Java

Cloud/Kubernetes

Observability/Monitoring

System design

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Kubernetes

Grafana

Terraform

Job description

This listing's locations Remote - United States - (EST - PST

Employment Full-time

Workplace Remote

Compensation USD 196000–203000 per year Offers Equity

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At Gardens Interactive, we're building games centered on connection, collective adventure, and emergent stories. We believe the spirit with which we build games is reflected in the experiences our players have. The way we collaborate, solve problems, navigate uncertainty, and care for one another ultimately shapes the worlds we create. We're creating magical, shared experiences that bring players together and we know those experiences come from teams that are curious, resilient, ambitious, and deeply committed to one another.

We're a fully remote studio that embraces collaboration, thoughtful iteration, and the courage to explore new ideas. If you're excited by ambiguity, enjoy solving difficult problems with kind, talented teammates, and want to help build worlds where friendships flourish, we'd love to meet you.

As our Lead Backend Engineer, you will...

• Manage, mentor, and grow a team of backend engineers: set goals, run 1:1s, give feedback, and support career development.
• Create hiring plans and interview technical candidates based on product needs.
• Own team processes: planning, code review standards, on-call/bug triage, and how work gets scoped and estimated.
• Create a healthy, high-trust engineering culture at a mid-size studio scale.

Hands-on Development

• Review pull requests and unblock engineers on hard technical problems.
• Own the evolution of our backend architecture and write production code on critical-path systems.
• Own reliability, service level objectives, incident response, and infrastructure cost.

Cross-functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with game design, marketing, and production to scope features and keep engineering aligned with the creative vision.
• Partner with the Technical Director to create a realistic technical roadmap.
• Communicate engineering status, risks, and trade-offs clearly to studio leadership.

What You’ll Bring

• 6+ years of professional backend experience, with games/live-service development strongly preferred.
• 2+ years of experience directly managing or leading engineers.
• Strong Kotlin or Java skills and familiarity with Kubernetes, Grafana, Terraform, and load-testing tools.
• Hands-on experience with scaling backend systems to a global audience and the debugging, monitoring, and alerting challenges that come with it.
• Solid grasp of software architecture and design patterns, and the judgment to know when to apply them versus keep things simple.
• Experience working cross-functionally with design, marketing, and production on a shipped or in-development game.
• Comfortable operating with high ownership in a lean team where you wear multiple hats.
• Strong communication skills: able to explain technical trade-offs to non-engineers and rally a small team around a plan.

Nice to Have

• Experience taking a live-service game through launch and post-launch operations.
• Experience at an independent or mid-size studio.

The Team

• Reports to the Technical Director.
• Leads the Backend Engineering team.
• Partners closely with the Gameplay Lead, Technical Director, Production, Design, Marketing, QA, and the broader engineering organization.

How We Work

We believe great games are built by people who care deeply about both the work and one another. Our values guide how we collaborate, solve problems, make decisions, and grow together. They're practical behaviors, not slogans, and they're part of how we hire, give feedback, and support one another every day.

We're looking for teammates who are excited to:

• Stay curious and ask thoughtful questions.
• Adapt when plans change.
• Exercise good judgment rather than chase perfection.
• Care for the success of the whole team, not just their own work.
• Pursue ambitious goals while remaining humble enough to keep learning.
• Commit fully to the shared adventure we're building together.

You’ll Thrive Here If...

• You enjoy asking questions before jumping to conclusions.
• You adapt comfortably when priorities evolve./* Note: this line mistakenly uses a bad close tag; incorrect. Should be fixed. */
• You balance ambition with pragmatism.
• You communicate thoughtfully and seek feedback.
• You care about helping your teammates succeed.
• You embrace uncertainty as part of creating something new.

Please Note: Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States or Canada. Gardens cannot assist with work authorizations or work visas. Applicants must also be willing to work within North American time zones (EST-PST).

Our Interview Process

(all interviews are 1 hour video calls on Google Meet unless otherwise noted)

• Step 1: People Operations Introduction
• Step 3: Panel Interview (3 - 1 Hour Sections)
• Step 5: Offer

Life at Gardens

Gardens is a fully distributed game studio founded by creators behind titles including Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, Blaseball, Dustforce, Ashen, Guild Wars 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, and more.

We're developing our flagship project: a multiplayer fantasy adventure inspired by the friendships, discoveries, and unforgettable stories that emerge when people explore together.

We believe the best ideas come from teams with diverse experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, and ways of thinking. Every Gardener helps shape not only what we build, but how we build it.

Each of us arrives by a different path, bringing unique experiences, perspectives, and ways of seeing the world. That range is part of what makes our games and our studio better than any one of us could build alone.

• Competitive salaries and pay transparency
• Stock options
• Life insurance, short-term and long-term disability, and additional benefits
• 401(k) contributions (U.S.) / RRSP + DPSP contributions (Canada)
• Paid parental leave
• A fully distributed remote studio across North American time zones

Benefits and perks listed may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Gardens and the country in which you work.

Physical Requirements

This is a primarily sedentary, remote role requiring the ability to remain stationary and perform computer-based work for extended periods, including sustained use of monitors, keyboards, mice, and game controllers for a minimum of six hours per day. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of the role. Gardens is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities.

Encouragement

We believe that diverse perspectives make our team stronger and our games better. If you're excited about this role but don't meet every single qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Research Consistently Shows

Research consistently shows that talented people, particularly women, people of color, and those from historically underrepresented communities are less likely to apply unless they meet every listed requirement. We care far more about curiosity, growth, and a willingness to learn than checking every box.