Senior Backend Engineer

Wand

Senior Backend Engineer optimizing backend systems for gaming tools used by 40M+ players. Collaborating with cross-functional teams to drive tech advancements and product features.

Posted 5/20/2026full-timeRemote • Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AnsibleElectronLaravelMariaDBMySQLNoSQLPHPPostgresSymfonyTerraformTypeScript

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own meaningful parts of the backend
Scope, design, ship, and stabilize the services the rest of the product depends on. Own the fix when something misbehaves at 2am.
Make the architectural calls — data model evolution, caching boundaries, where to spend latency budget, when to refactor and when to rewrite.
Work fluidly across the data layer. Relational stores at scale (MySQL, MariaDB) and document stores (Firestore) are both in the toolkit, and you know which to reach for and when.
Treat infrastructure as code as part of the job. Terraform and Ansible aren’t someone else’s problem; a service isn’t shipped until it can be re-deployed without you in the room.
Treat performance, observability, and operational health as part of “done.” Dashboards and alerts ship with the feature.
Move across the stack when the work demands it
Open TypeScript PRs in the Electron app when a feature is better wired end-to-end than handed off. You’re comfortable on both sides of the boundary.
Have opinions on UX workflows and product surfaces, not just API shapes. The best backend engineers we’ve worked with care how the thing feels.
Get into the Electron app, the overlay, or the web surface when that’s where the bug actually is.
Drive the backend roadmap
Take ownership of what we work on, what we cut, and what we sequence. The Head of Engineering will partner closely early on; the bar is that this person eventually drives the roadmap on their own.
Push cross-cutting initiatives nobody else will — observability gaps, data model debt, perf regressions, API hygiene. The work that quietly compounds.
Provide substantive code review, mentor where it lands naturally, and raise the level of design discussions when the design needs it, not just the implementation.
Bring thoughtfulness and genuine passion for the work. Contribute to roadmap decisions with an eye on outcomes.

Requirements

What you’ll need

6+ years building production backend systems, ideally for a consumer product with real scale. You can talk about what you built, who used it, and what shipped because of it.
Strong with PHP 8.2 (Laravel or Symfony), or comparable depth in another modern web stack with a credible plan to ramp on PHP fast. Not a hard requirement — we care more about the engineer than the language.
Relational data modeling at scale (MySQL, MariaDB, or Postgres). You’ve made the call between a wide table and a join table and lived with the consequences.
Comfortable across data stores. You’ve also reached for a document or NoSQL database (Firestore or similar) when the shape of the data called for it — and you know when not to.
Infrastructure as code is a default. Terraform, Ansible, or comparable. You don’t ship a service without thinking about how it gets deployed and re-deployed.
Comfortable working full stack. TypeScript in an Electron or web app isn’t a foreign country — you’ve shipped there before.
Outcome-oriented and high ownership. You measure yourself by what the team shipped, not by what you personally wrote. Ambiguous problems read as interesting, not as blockers — you’ll pick something up and figure it out.
Fluent with the AI tooling that’s reshaping how engineers work. Claude Code or equivalent, the coding-agent ecosystem, MCPs, the workflows people are actually using day-to-day. You stay current because you find it interesting, not because someone told you to.
Opinions on UX workflows and product. You push back on product when the API shape they want will paint us into a corner; you push back on yourself when you’re optimizing the wrong thing.
Strong written and verbal communication. You write a design doc that gets read all the way through.
Self-managing. You can pick up an ambiguous initiative and drive it without daily check-ins.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive compensation and equity package
Fully remote work arrangement
The chance to build core infrastructure for an audience of 40M+ players who will actually feel the difference
A team of people who genuinely love games, move incredibly fast, and care deeply about what they build.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

PHP 8.2LaravelSymfonyMySQLMariaDBPostgresFirestoreTerraformAnsibleTypeScript

Soft Skills

outcome-orientedhigh ownershipstrong written communicationstrong verbal communicationself-managingmentoringthoughtfulnesspassion for workproblem-solvingdesign discussion