Senior Full-Stack Engineer (Go, Node.js)

TL;DR

Senior Full-Stack Engineer (Game Development): Building and optimizing complex, scalable full-stack systems for live games with an accent on architectural decisions, backend services, and API design. Focus on integrating backend with frontend, data model reliability, performance optimizations, and defining security standards.

Location: Hybrid work model in Portugal. Candidates must be available to work standard hours from 09:00 to 18:00 in the Western European Time (WET) zone. If residing in the Lisbon metropolitan area, expected to work onsite one to three times per week. If based outside Lisbon, a different onsite cadence applies. This is a 1-year contract position. Candidates outside of Portugal will be engaged via hirify.global’s international payroll provider.

Company

hirify.global is an evergreen, founder-led product company with 20 years of experience creating world-renowned games for various platforms.

What you will do

• Own technical direction and delivery of complex, scalable full-stack systems for live games.
• Design and make architectural decisions for backend and frontend systems, balancing performance, scalability, and maintainability.
• Build and evolve backend services and APIs, integrating them with web-based frontends and browser games.
• Design, implement, and maintain reliable data models, ensuring correctness, security, and performance at scale.
• Identify performance bottlenecks across the stack and proactively drive optimizations.
• Set engineering quality standards through code reviews, architectural guidance, and mentorship.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional experience building backend or full-stack production systems.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with server-side runtimes (e.g., Node.js).
• 3+ years working with modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks on both frontend (React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, etc.) and backend (Express.js, NestJS, Next.js, Remix, etc.).
• Proven experience writing production backend services in Go.
• Experience designing, building, and maintaining RESTful APIs at scale.
• Strong analytical skills and clear written and verbal communication skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with game backend platforms (Nakama, Firebase, PlayFab).
• Experience operating online games with thousands of concurrent users.
• Hands-on experience with relational and/or NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.).
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Solid understanding of microservices, distributed systems, and real-time architectures.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation with structured performance and career development check-ins.
• Health insurance.
• Additional budget for conferences and personal development.
• Time off from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day.
• Summer Fridays off.
• A unique culture of transparency, true teamwork, and fun.