Senior Backend Engineer, King
12 Month FTC
1-4 days a week in office
Mobile games developer
Open for applications
Mobile games developer
1001+ employees
Open for applications
1-4 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
At King, we’re Making the World Playful. Heard of Candy Crush? We’re the creators behind it. But we aren’t just crushing it with candies, we’re also behind Farm Heroes, Bubble Witch, Pet Rescue and loads of other sweet games.
Role
Who you are
- You have a strong passion for building backend technologies that serve millions of users every day. You are a good communicator, happy to work with people from several different business units. You are excited about doing what’s best for the game, and adaptable enough to work on different things as the game moves between phases
- Strong experience with Java, databases and caching
- Experience in Web Development, preferably with React
- Experience working with platform security and secrets management
- Experience working in a cloud-based environment, preferably with Google Cloud Platform
- Knowledge and experience in CI/CD, test automation, CloudBees, Gradle and related technologies
- Understanding of concurrency, scalability, and the challenges of large-scale systems
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills, and the ability to work well in a team
- Hard-working and strive to deliver
- Fluent in English
What the job involves
- As a Backend Engineer working with one of our existing live games, you will contribute to an essential 12-month project focused on enhancing the security frameworks of our games. This project also aims to fortify our products, which serve hundreds of millions of players
- In this project, you will primarily work with one of our live games and collaborate with colleagues from other teams. The project will span a larger portion of our systems, providing a great opportunity to learn about and improve our technology
- For the time being, we’re offering a fixed-term 12-month contract, but we value great talent! If you enjoy working with us during this period, we would be delighted to explore the possibility of finding a permanent role for you in our company
- As part of the development team, you will enjoy a creative, challenging, and collaborative environment where your ideas will be every bit as valued as your programming expertise
- Design, architect, and implement server features required to support new game functionality, platform enhancements, and operations
- Ensure security, high performance, reliability, and scalability of the backend infrastructure
- Deliver code of the highest quality through good design
- Attention to detail and system testing on a timely basis
- Share knowledge and help colleagues both inside and outside of your team
- Comfortable working on a live game product with millions of users every day
Salary benchmarks
Otta's take
Xav Kearney
CTO of Otta
Gaming is one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, but many still view gaming as inconvenient, inaccessible, or niche. King solves that problem by designing mobile games with broad market appeal.
Since its launch, King has released more than 200 titles in 14 languages, including Candy Crush, Farm Heroes, Bubble Witch, Pet Rescue, and more. The company pioneered in-game spending, which allows it to monetize user interactions without charging them to buy the game. Titles such as Candy Crush are designed to be highly accessible to demographics that wouldn’t usually define themselves as “gamers”, including older users. King now boasts more than 200 million monthly active users, making it a clear market leader.
In 2016, King was bought by gaming giant Activision Blizzard, which has since been purchased by Microsoft. While the company still operates with a high degree of independence, it has greatly profited from the financial and marketing support of its parent corporation. This support has been instrumental in enabling King to maintain its competitiveness in the constantly evolving mobile gaming industry.
Insights
Company
Employee endorsements
Focus on employee wellbeing
"There is an amazing worklife balance that the company puts an emphasis on. On top of that there are amazing benefits to take part in, for example in..."
Funding (2 rounds)
Sep 2005
$43m
SERIES A
Jun 2005
$41m
EARLY VC
Total funding: $84m
Company benefits
- 🏥 Private medical, dental, critical illness and pension plans
- 🌴 Generous paid holidays, with additional time off close down between 25th December and the New Year
- 🥯 Next-level offices that provide numerous creative spaces as well as free breakfast, snacks, and drinks
- 🎒 Exclusive, free goodies
- 🏳️🌈 Four employee-led diversity-focused networks and other community groups that raise awareness
- ❤️ Reimbursements for both physical and mental health-related activities. Some offices also have their own onsite gyms.
- 🏅 Community Day, charity donation matching, free and discounted Activision Blizzard games, and our Royal Recognition Awards rewarding commitment of long-serving Kingsters
Company values
- Fun & Friendly 🧡 We create an inclusive environment where everyone can belong. We build trust, we're supportive and demanding in everything we do, and we're not afraid to have fun along the way
- Care & Craft 🤗 We put our heart and soul into everything we do - and we do it for our players. It takes all Kingsters, contributing in different ways, to craft and operate brilliant mass-appeal games
- Humble & Open 📖 We treat each other as equals. We seek and give feedback, we listen, we learn, and we're honest with ourselves and others
- Fast & Fluid ⏩ We are responsive and embrace change. We take smart risks, are always ready to dust ourselves off, learn fast, and try again
- Creative Champions 🏅 We are curious about our players and we drive innovation in big and small ways to delight them every day. We boldly seek new ways of thinking to unleash creativity
- Passion & Performance 📈 Our passion guides us to set ambitious goals for ourselves and each other. We hold each other accountable, see things through, and contribute to our sustainable growth
Company HQ
Soho, London, UK
Articles
Founders
Tjodolf Sommestad
(President )President from February 2022. Previously served as King’s Chief Development Officer.
People progressing
Leading a data science team responsible for supporting performance marketing to make informed decisions with data
Joined as Senior Developer. Promoted to Engineering Manager after 2 years and is now leading two engineering teams in the Telemetry & Streaming domain.
Diversity & Inclusion at King
Vikki Leach (Senior Director, DE&I)
- A great saga needs all sorts of heroes. At King, we share a passion for making the world playful. To achieve this, it takes people with different skills, experiences, and world views to work together.
- There’s no such thing as a typical gamer. That’s why we embrace and celebrate what makes us different rather than what makes us the same
- Our Employee Networks help us to stay connected as individuals and as a company; Kaleidoscope (ethnic, cultural, and national diversity), Royal Unicorns (LGBTQIA+), Women@King (crushing bias and equal opportunities) and CAN (collective abilities).
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