Senior Software Engineer, Backend

About the Company

If you want to build, develop, and see your impact, join Skillz and level up your Career!

Skillz, the first publicly-traded mobile eSports platform that hosts billions of casual mobile gaming tournaments for millions of players worldwide, is revolutionizing the gaming industry. By fostering social competition within games, the Skillz platform helps developers build multi-million dollar franchises by enabling real-money activity in their games and providing operational support while connecting players through fair, enjoyable, and meaningful competition.

At Skillz, we understand the thrill of achievement and the satisfaction of overcoming challenges. Want to join a team made up of alums from Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Twitter (X), Roblox, Zynga, Samsung, Lyft, EA, Riot, Nexon, Gameskraft, PlayStation, Unity, Scopely, Tinder, Intel, Deloitte, EY, Twitch, DraftKings, Wynn Resorts and more? Learn more to see if Skillz is the right fit for your next career move!

Why Skillz

• Culture of Impact: Join a united team of builders, creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs driven by the desire to win. At Skillz, we create value, obsess over our product, and make a difference in the world.

• Comprehensive Benefits: Enjoy peace of mind with our comprehensive benefits package, which includes 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision expenses for both you and your dependents. Additionally, take advantage of our 401K matching, equity incentives, pre-tax benefit options, and more.

• Wellness Support: Enhance your well-being with our array of wellness initiatives, including meditation and mental health resources, physical fitness coaching and classes, family planning assistance, health and parenting guidance, virtual therapy sessions, and more.

• Time off: We offer competitive paid time off (PTO) & company holidays to help you recharge and pursue your passions.

• Las Vegas Headquarters: Skillz strongly believes in a five-day a week, collaborative office environment at our 36,000+ square foot headquarters. Enjoy free breakfast and catered lunches, snacks, a full-size gym with showers, commuter benefits, insurance, team bonding events and many more. 

• Recognized Success: Skillz has earned recognition as one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, CNBC's Disruptor 50, San Francisco Business Times' Best Places to Work, Forbes' Next Billion-Dollar Startups, and the #1 fastest-growing company in America on the Inc. 5000 list, and many more.

• Development Opportunities: We hold our employees to high standards while providing them with professional growth opportunities. We operate like a startup, and encourage all of our employees to collaborate and voice feedback about our product and ways we can improve as a business. We believe in never settling, and that also pertains to your growth. 

Key Competencies 

1. Core Tech Stack: 4-7 years building production backend services with Node.js (Express/Fastify/NestJS). Strong TypeScript skills, RESTful API design, and experience with both SQL (PostgreSQL/MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB/Redis) databases.

2. Gaming Platform Backend Experience: Prior experience in online gaming, RMG, or casual gaming platforms is strongly preferred. Social casino experience is not required. Understanding of game provider API integrations (aggregator feeds, RTP configs, game session management), real-time event processing, and high-concurrency systems.

3. Payments & Wallet Systems: Experience building or maintaining payment processing pipelines: deposit flows, redemption/payout queues, smart retry logic, PSP integrations, and wallet balance management. Understanding of PCI-DSS compliance requirements.

4. Fraud & Risk Infra: Familiarity with building backend systems for fraud detection: device fingerprint ingestion, linked-account graph storage, rules engine execution, velocity checks, and audit logging. Bonus if experienced with Sift, Forter, or similar platforms.

5. Scalability & Reliability: Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred: EC2, Lambda, SQS, RDS, ElastiCache), containerization (Docker/ECS), and building systems that handle spiky traffic patterns typical of gaming platforms (tournament starts, promotional drops).

6. Event-Driven Architecture: Hands-on with message queues (SQS, Kafka, RabbitMQ), event-driven microservices, and real-time data pipelines. Experience with WebSocket servers for live features (tournaments, leaderboards, notifications).

7. Security & Compliance: Strong understanding of authentication/authorization (JWT, OAuth2), API security best practices, rate limiting, and data privacy requirements for US sweepstakes (KYC data handling, PII encryption at rest/in transit).

8. Nice to have — Java / Go: Prior production experience with Java or Golang is a plus, particularly for engineers transitioning from JVM/Go-heavy gaming backends.

Experience 

1. 4+ years of professional work experience with Node.js (Express / Fastify / NestJS) and TypeScript

2. Proven experience independently owning 1+ backend service in production at a consumer-facing scale

3. Strong experience with distributed, multi-tiered systems, caching mechanisms (Redis / Memcached), and relational databases (PostgreSQL / MySQL)

4. Hands-on with cloud providers (AWS preferred: EC2, Lambda, SQS, RDS, ElastiCache), Docker/ECS, and CI/CD pipelines

5. Experience with event-driven architecture (SQS, Kafka, RabbitMQ) and WebSocket-based live features

6. Strong understanding of API security, authn/authz (JWT, OAuth2), rate limiting, and data privacy (PII encryption, KYC data handling)

7. Experience in the gaming industry is strongly preferred (alternatively, deep experience with consumer-facing real-time products)

8. Nice to have: Production experience with Java or Golang

9. Able to work in-office 3 days a week in Bangalore, India

10. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a technical field of study, or equivalent industry experience

Location: Onsite in Bangalore, India

Travel Requirement: Less than 10% 

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