Mid-Senior Game Backend Developer (Chinese Mandarin Speaker)

Benefits

• 401(k)
• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Paid sick time
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance

Location: Irvine, CA 92618 on-site. Relocation: Relocate before starting work. Compensation: From $100,000 per year.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate the backend services powering Unity-based titles and Telegram mini-games.
• Handle real-time communication to support responsive gameplay and social features.
• Manage game state synchronization across clients and services.
• Implement and oversee matchmaking workflows for multiplayer experiences.
• Conduct live operations to ensure uptime and quality of service.

Requirements

• Solid Java fundamentals with a strong understanding of the JVM, multithreading, and concurrent programming.
• Proficient with WebSocket, socket.io, and other real-time communication technologies.
• Hands-on experience with Netty for building high-performance, low-latency network applications.
• Experience in RESTful API design and development.
• Familiar with Protobuf (or other serialization protocols such as FlatBuffers or Thrift).
• Solid understanding of high-concurrency and distributed system design, including load balancing and horizontal scaling.
• Experience with relational databases (MySQL or PostgreSQL) and caching (Redis).
• Familiar with common frameworks (Spring Boot, Netty, etc.).
• Experience deploying and operating services on AWS (EC2, ECS/EKS, RDS, ElastiCache, S3).
• Strong troubleshooting and performance optimization skills.
• Chinese Mandarin fluent.
• On-site in Irvine, CA 92618 (Required).
• Relocation before starting work (Required).

Preferred Experience

• Solid backend development experience with a focus on game and real-time service backends.
• Experience shipping and operating at least one live game or online product end-to-end.
• Experience supporting Unity-based games on the backend, collaborating with Unity client engineers on networking and protocol design.
• Experience shipping lightweight social or instant games, including platform integration (bot API, authentication, payments).
• Proven experience building systems that handle high concurrency and tens of thousands of concurrent users (CCU).
• Hands-on experience designing real-time communication architectures for latency-sensitive applications.
• Experience collaborating in cross-functional teams (client engineers, game designers, QA, operations).

Nice to Have

• Prior experience in game backend or real-time multiplayer projects is strongly preferred.
• Experience working with Unity client teams and understanding of Unity client–server communication.
• Familiarity with Node.js for backend services or tooling.
• Experience building Telegram mini-games or other instant/social platform games.
• Familiarity with message queues such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience building game-specific systems such as matchmaking, leaderboards, and anti-cheat.

Technologies

Java, WebSocket, socket.io, Netty, RESTful API, Protobuf, FlatBuffers, Thrift, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Spring Boot, AWS, EC2, ECS, EKS, RDS, ElastiCache, S3