Lead Software Engineer (Backend Systems)

At Kabam, we’re constantly raising the bar of excellence in free-to-play gaming. We hire for passion and diversity so that we can triumph in our collective skill. Our teams are made up of a fusion of personalities and interests bound together by a collaborative nature, fun-loving culture, and a drive to do what it takes to make great games. And this is where you come in…

We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer with a focus on Backend Systems to join our team, bringing deep knowledge and experience of NodeJS, Production Environments and engineering best practices to maintain uptime, diagnose and remediate bad product behaviour and keep product dependencies up to date. This position works closely with backend feature engineers and site reliability engineers to improve processes, schedule and roll out improvements, and maintain a backlog of work to complete.

This is a hybrid position based in our Downtown office.

In this role, you can expect to be involved in:

• Upgrade Backend technology to keep our product up to date with stable releases of partner software including Node, NPM packages, Kubernetes, Mongo and GCP features.
• Work with Production to identify the backlog and timeline of upgrades, including urgent upgrades such as security patches.
• Be accountable in monitoring, analyzing and prioritizing performance concerns such as memory usage and leaks, server crashes, hangs and pauses, infrastructure cost and more.
• Drive and lead roll out and maintain software engineering best practices such as zero error logging, unit tests, indexing, sharding and others.
• Lead troubleshooting efforts, identifying root causes and implementing effective solutions.
• Identify and select appropriate technologies to ensure scalability, performance, security, and maintainability. Will include sunsetting and replacement.
• Lead meetings, discussions, and code reviews to ensure code quality.
• Promote documentation of software designs, code, and technical processes.
• Mentor and guide junior software engineers, sharing knowledge and providing constructive feedback.
• As needed, participate in pager duty responsibilities and (roughly one week every seven weeks) be incident commander for live incidents.

To be successful in this role, your background includes:

• Advanced working experience with Node.js - contributions to the Node.js project ideal
• 7+ years of experience in software development, ideally in gaming
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience
• Have maintained a live game in production using Node.js using a Cloud provider
• Have maintained a live database such as Mongo.
• Ability to write clean, simple, well-documented code from design requirements
• Proven track record of working independently and collaboratively in a dynamic team setting
• Experience working in Agile, Kanban, or similar project management methodologies
• Experience in Profiling Node
• Knowledge in how to deal with platform/device specific issues
• A problem-solver with a keen eye to identify areas of improvement

Our success is due to the hard work of our people. We share our success with our people through flexible benefits and reward programs, sweet swag, snacks, and more. Here’s a look at some of the support we provide our people:

• Extended Health Coverage: effective day one, no waiting period! Our benefits cover health, dental, life, disability, and extended paramedical services such as vision care, mental health practitioners, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and much more.
• DEIB Benefits: DEIB is important to us and to our people - that’s why our benefits include gender-affirming care, fertility care, and other hormonal treatments and drugs.
• Flexible Spending Accounts: our benefits are built on a flex credit model, so you’re able to choose the coverage levels that are right for you, and allocate the rest to a group RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending account, and/or Personal Spending Account.
• RRSP Matching: everyone retires eventually, and we help our people save for their futures with a contribution matching program once you reach 90 days with us.
• PTO and Parental Leave: we offer paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program: this program provides crisis management support, immediate mental health care, and generalized support for emotional, mental, and financial well-being.
• Telus Virtual Health: we provide increased access to remote healthcare providers for prescription refills or referrals from the comfort of your home.
• Learning and growth: We encourage people to grow both personally and professionally, and support this through regular lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency: We share with employees the pay range their role falls within and clear career maps to determine how they can grow within their role or level-up to a promotion.
• Cool spaces: Our offices are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Montreal, Prince Edward Island, and Seoul. Whether it’s summers on the rooftop patio in Downtown Vancouver, watching the fireworks in Montreal’s South Shore, or trying local eats in Downtown Charlottetown - we want our people to feel like their time spent in office is worthwhile!
• Giving back: Kabammers have a dedicated paid day off every year to volunteer to a cause close to their hearts. Some teams even band together for group volunteer days off-site!
• Hybrid Work: Kabammers typically spend at least two days per week in office. We believe in blending in-office collaboration with the freedom of remote work, and want everyone to have flexibility while fostering strong connections.

The typical hiring range listed above is specific to candidates located in Vancouver. The salary will be determined based on your knowledge, skills and competencies, and you’ll have room to grow after you join!

If you’re interested in the position but your expectations don’t fully align with the provided range, we still encourage you to apply! Considerations may be made based on your experience level.

Excited by this opportunity? Kabam is dedicated to growing our diverse and inclusive workforce, so if your past experience doesn’t perfectly match the listed requirements we encourage you to apply anyways - you could be a great fit for this or other positions.

We invite you to apply now and start the conversation with us. Together, we can create and support some of the best games ever made and entertain the world!