Remote Lead Backend Engineer - Games, Equity, Growth

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

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.