Senior Lead Architect (Backend)

Location: Santa Monica, California, United States; onsite four days per week

Salary: $149,100–$275,876 annual base pay in the United States, plus possible incentive compensation.

Company

Interactive entertainment company developing and publishing major gaming franchises and related technology.

What you will do

• Define and evolve backend architecture for shared services, APIs, integrations, and cloud-hosted platforms.
• Lead architecture and design reviews for backend changes, service decomposition, shared libraries, and modernization initiatives.
• Establish engineering standards for API design, service contracts, deployment patterns, observability, and operational readiness.
• Partner with engineers and SREs to troubleshoot production and platform issues and implement durable fixes.
• Design reusable infrastructure and automation patterns across GCP workflows, including secrets management and service access.
• Mentor senior engineers and serve as a technical escalation point for distributed systems, backend performance, and architectural tradeoffs.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including senior backend or architecture-focused roles.
• Deep experience with Java or similar backend languages, microservices, APIs, distributed systems, and cloud-native architecture.
• Strong knowledge of containers, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure and security patterns in modern cloud environments.
• Ability to influence multiple teams without direct authority and translate business needs into durable technical solutions.
• Ability to work onsite in the Santa Monica, California office four days per week.

Culture & Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings or reimbursement accounts, and insurance programs.
• 401(k) with company match, tuition reimbursement, and charitable donation matching.
• Paid holidays and vacation, sick time, floating holidays, parental leave, and other leave programs.
• Mental health, wellbeing, and fitness programs, plus free and discounted games.
• Relocation assistance may be available if the company requires a geographic move for the role.