Senior Java Engineer (PST Overlap)

Our client is one of the largest game studios known for their very successful MOBA and FPS franchises. You will be a member of the Organized Play team that builds the systems that power competitive play - from tournament registration and operator tooling to the backend services that drive player and fan-facing experiences.

You’ll work across:

• Compete Services - Spring Boot-based services supporting tournament workflows and public-facing APIs
• Esports Services - modelling tournaments, brackets, and match structures

Please note, availability to attend afternoon/evening meetings is a requirement for this role as most of the team is located on the US West Coast (LA and Seattle)

Responsibilities:

• Implement tournament lifecycle logic (Swiss, playoffs, standings, tiebreakers)
• Build workflows for registration, dropouts, rule enforcement, and audit logging
• Extend backend services that model tournaments and match structures
• Design and evolve clean, maintainable backend components
• Develop REST and GraphQL APIs
• Work with relational databases to model and query tournament data
• Debug complex production issues and review peer code
• Participate fully in 2-week sprints and team rituals

Required Qualifications:

• 6+ years backend development experience with ownership of production systems
• Strong modern Java (17+)
• Experience building services with Spring Boot or similar frameworks
• Demonstrated ability to design clean, maintainable backend architectures
• Experience building systems with complex workflows or state transitions
• Experience designing REST APIs
• Experience with JPA/Hibernate or strong SQL-first data modeling (e.g., JOOQ)
• Solid relational database fundamentals
• Comfortable working independently in a remote environment

Nice To Have:

• Experience with GraphQL APIs
• Experience with event-driven systems (Kinesis, Kafka, etc.)
• Experience implementing caching or rate limiting
• Experience building correctness-critical systems
• Experience building internal/operator tools
• Experience with competitive or gaming platforms
• Familiarity with trading card games (TCGs) and tournament formats (e.g., Swiss rounds, decklists, brackets), or a strong interest in competitive gaming, esports