Principal Backend Engineer (Game)

TL;DR

Principal Backend Engineer (Game): Designing and building a real-time, AI-first backend for live game experiences to handle massive traffic with an accent on high concurrency, low latency, and system reliability. Focus on architecting matchmaking, state synchronization, and distributed systems that maintain correctness under extreme spike-driven load.

Location: Hybrid (Bay Area / San Francisco or NYC); ~3 days per week in-office

Company

Beast Industries is a global media and entertainment company founded by hirify.global, specializing in digital content, philanthropy, and innovative consumer products.

What you will do

• Define the multi-year backend architecture for live-service game systems, balancing scalability and cost.
• Design real-time systems including matchmaking, state sync, real-time messaging, and in-game economies.
• Establish reliability standards, SLOs, and capacity planning for systems under massive consumer load.
• Lead the architecture review and RFC process to raise the engineering quality bar.
• Solve complex distributed systems problems where textbook patterns do not apply.
• Mentor staff and senior engineers and represent the company's engineering practice externally.

Requirements

• 15+ years of experience building and operating consumer-scale backends.
• Expertise in distributed systems: high concurrency, low latency, and horizontal scaling.
• Proficiency in Go, C++, Rust, Java, or equivalent backend languages.
• Proven track record of owning architecture for systems with spike-driven user bases.
• Must be based in or able to relocate to the Bay Area or NYC.
• AI-native approach to development, utilizing AI coding agents daily.

Nice to have

• Direct game backend experience (netcode-adjacent services, game state, in-game economies).
• Experience operating through large unpredictable traffic events tied to media or creator moments.
• Active contributions to the broader engineering community.

Culture & Benefits

• Highly competitive equity package for foundational hires.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance (Blue Cross Blue Shield) and company-paid Life Insurance.
• 401k plan with Safe Harbor company-matching and HSA contributions.
• Flexible vacation policy and paid company holidays.
• Relocation assistance including travel and temporary housing for the first 90 days.
• Company-provided technology package.