Senior Backend Engineer

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of core backend systems for Last Epoch: gameplay services, state/inventory services, player progression, and economy-related workflows
• Design and implement scalable APIs and event-driven pipelines
• Build for high availability and performance on Azure, including data storage, caching, queues, and background processing
• Establish engineering standards for C# backend development
• Drive reliability practices including idempotency, consistency models, and graceful degradation
• Partner with game design and product to translate gameplay requirements into technical solutions
• Improve code and feature velocity through reviews and architecture docs
• Contribute to CI/CD and operational readiness
• Manage security, compliance, and system design
• Optimize hot paths in C# services and reduce latency
• Participate in an on-call rotation via Pager Duty

Requirements

• 5+ years building and supporting online services with SLA requirements
• Strong backend engineering experience writing high performance C#
• Production experience on Azure, specifically AKS and CosmosDB
• Demonstrated experience building distributed systems and event-driven architectures
• Deep understanding of data consistency, idempotency, retries, and failure modes
• Strong hands-on skills in API design, performance tuning, and operational excellence
• Experience designing systems that support real-time or near-real-time gameplay loops
• Background in systems design with the ability to build maintainable, scalable solutions
• Experience with mentoring engineers, code reviews, and setting technical standards
• Excellent cross-discipline collaboration and communication skills

Preferred Qualifications

• 2+ years experience working in a game studio
• Experience configuring console storefronts (PlayStation, Xbox, Switch)
• Experience with PlayFab, Nitrado/GameFabric
• Unity and Unreal experience
• Experience optimizing performance across platforms (PC and console)
• Knowledge of ARPGs, action combat systems, or similar
• Experience building for GAAS