• Develop, maintain, and optimize services and APIs in Java (Spring Boot or similar frameworks) • Implement integrations between systems and relational and non-relational databases • Ensure the scalability, security, and performance of backend applications • Collaborate with frontend developers for API integration and to resolve technical dependencies • Contribute to architectural decisions, coding standards, and best practices • Perform tests and participate in code reviews to ensure the quality of deliverables

Soulbound, a cutting-edge indie game studio based in London, building a cross-platform MMORPG with pixel art aesthetics and browser-based access. We've built infrastructure for a single-shard game world that spins up localised regional clusters for instanced combat, delivering low-latency action RPG gameplay with the flexibility for players to play with anyone, from anywhere in the world, at any time. The game features real-time player-shared worlds, co-op dungeons, 10-player raids, player housing, questing, online and offline background crafting, auction houses, and live chat. All of it running simultaneously, all of it real-time. The Role We need backend engineers who can help us scale this infrastructure for launch and beyond. You'll work directly with our CTO on the systems that keep thousands of players connected, fighting, trading, and exploring in the same world simultaneously. Our backend is 60+ microservices running on Google Kubernetes Engine. Stateful game servers, event-driven architecture with Kafka, MongoDB and PostgreSQL databases, WebSocket real-time communication, and multi-cluster orchestration. The system works at current scale, your job is making it work at 10x that. This role is perfect for a passionate individual contributor eager to tackle some of the most thrilling, challenging, and distinctive problems in contemporary software development. The real-time demands of an online MMO present a one-of-a-kind opportunity, and we’re searching for the brilliant mind ready to dive into these intricate, interconnected systems. What You'll Do - Build, optimise, and scale backend services powering real-time multiplayer gameplay - Work with GKE, Helm, and Kubernetes to manage deployments and autoscaling for stateful game servers - Improve observability: monitoring dashboards, alerting (Prometheus/Grafana or GCP Cloud Monitoring), and incident response - Scale distributed databases (MongoDB, PostgreSQL) under high concurrent load - Optimise Kafka event streaming for player actions, game state, and inter-service communication - Identify and resolve bottlenecks before they become player-facing problems - Improve resilience and prevent cascading failures across services - Collaborate on architectural decisions with a small, senior engineering team

• Participate in inceptions and iteration planning meetings, infusing backlogs with technical input working in close partnership with the product manager. • Partners in collaboration and strategy alignment across product portfolios (cross-product) in partnership with product managers, other peers and key stakeholders. • Serves as an expert on one or more business domain and a distinguished advocate of multiple technology stacks and shares that knowledge across organizations. • Leads and participates in daily site, cross-site, and product team standups. • Leads and participates in retrospectives; demonstrating and encouraging each participant to provide feedback with empathy. • Provides support for software products in user environments. • Coaches the team and leads daily practices of using paired programming and test-driven development in writing software and building products. • Establishes continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment pipelines and practices.

• Design, develop, and deploy production-grade serverless functions using AWS Lambda. • Architect and maintain scalable microservices and APIs using Java and TypeScript. • Build and maintain high-performance web applications, leveraging both Vue and React depending on project requirements. • Manage and optimize AWS cloud resources to ensure high availability and security. • Work closely with cross-functional teams to translate complex business requirements into technical specifications. • Drive best practices in unit testing, CI/CD, and documentation to ensure a reliable and maintainable codebase.