Smile Break is looking for a Senior Game Server Engineer to help build the backend technology powering an ambitious, unannounced multiplayer strategy game.

You'll help design and build the backend services that power gameplay systems, player progression, live operations, and the online experiences players rely on every day. Working closely with gameplay engineers, designers, QA, and production, you'll solve challenging distributed systems problems while building reliable, scalable technology that enables great gameplay experiences.

Our team is fully remote and collaborates primarily during U.S. Eastern Time business hours. Candidates should be available during those hours.

What You'll Do

Design, develop, and maintain backend services and systems supporting a large-scale live-service multiplayer game.
Collaborate with gameplay engineers, designers, QA, and production to deliver new gameplay features from concept through release.
Design scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems while optimizing backend performance, scalability, latency, and operational reliability.
Monitor production services, investigate issues, and improve deployment pipelines, development workflows, testing, and operational tooling.
Design systems that improve game integrity by defending against exploits, cheating, automation, and abuse.
Participate in technical design, code reviews, and architectural decisions across the server platform.
Leverage modern backend technologies and AI-assisted development tools to continuously improve engineering productivity and software quality.

What We’re Looking For

Experience building large-scale backend services for multiplayer games, live-service titles, or other highly distributed production systems.
Strong Python experience with its ecosystem (libraries, frameworks, and tooling), including production experience with FastAPI, Flask, Tornado, or similar web frameworks. Deep understanding of asynchronous programming, concurrency, and multithreaded application design.
Experience designing scalable REST APIs and service-oriented architectures, with a strong understanding of distributed systems, performance, low-latency design, and writing efficient low-I/O code.
Strong understanding of Redis, MySQL (or similar relational databases), Linux, Docker, and cloud platforms such as AWS.
Experience deploying and operating production services, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, deployment strategies, performance optimization, and operational best practices.
Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively across engineering disciplines.
Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Codex, Claude Code, or similar engineering assistants.

Bonus Points

Experience shipping and operating online multiplayer or live-service games.
Experience with stateful and stateless game server architectures.
Experience building backend systems supporting player progression, guilds, matchmaking, leaderboards, game economies, or live events.
Familiarity with messaging technologies such as RabbitMQ, Redis Streams, or AWS SQS.
Experience using observability platforms such as Datadog, Kibana, or similar monitoring and logging tools.
Experience with AWS services including EC2, RDS, S3, ECR, IAM, and related infrastructure.
Familiarity with cloud networking concepts including VPCs, load balancing, and security groups.
Experience managing infrastructure using Terraform or other Infrastructure-as-Code solutions.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary range: $140,000 - 200,000 USD

Unlimited PTO (used responsibly and subject to business needs)
Medical, dental, and vision coverage
401(k) with company match
Fully remote work

Smile Break is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the country in which they reside. Visa sponsorship is not currently available for this position.