Senior Java Backend & DevOps Engineer - Agentic Engineering

About Goodgame Studios: Goodgame Studios is a premier, self-publishing MMO strategy gaming giant with over 200 million registered players worldwide and more than €1B in lifetime revenues. Headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, and operating as a vital part of the Stillfront Group—one of Europe’s leading game publishers focused on long-term IP growth—Goodgame Studios brings all relevant gaming professions under one roof to blend data-driven game development with hyper-scaled, always-on technical architectures.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly sophisticated, forward-thinking Senior Java Backend & DevOps Engineer who natively operates within an Agentic Engineering model. This is not a role for someone who has merely experimented with auto-completion. We are looking for an elite technical architect who structures and runs multi-agent parallel execution workflows (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, custom subagents, MCP servers, planning loops, and programmatic validation gates) as a core pillar of how they ship code. Orchestrating autonomous agents to drive a 10–20× throughput leverage over classical typing models, you will own the end-to-end architecture, low-latency performance tuning, and cloud infrastructure of backend services keeping massive virtual game worlds alive for millions of active players.

Key Responsibilities

• High-Throughput Services Architecture: Design, build, and operate highly resilient, low-latency distributed Java services (JDK 17+) engineered to scale seamlessly against unpredictable, massive real-time player loads.
• Infrastructure & GitOps Automation: Own the cloud-native technical stack end-to-end, configuring containerized deployment loops leveraging AWS, Kubernetes (K8s), Docker, Terraform, and ArgoCD pipelines.
• Database Layer Optimization: Architect, monitor, and fine-tune relational and caching storage matrices utilizing MySQL and Redis to performantly handle millions of concurrent player rows.
• Performance Telemetry Tuning: Eliminate application latency by executing deep code optimizations, managing complex multi-threaded concurrency models, and fine-tuning Garbage Collection (GC) parameters.
• Agentic Software Development Lifecycle: Run an innovative development loop holding up to rigorous validation review gates—directing agents to write precise specs, generate dense testing footprints, and validate builds, while acting as the final expert filter on design, security, and runtime constraints.
• Organizational AI Mentorship: Help define and scale agentic deployment standards, review practices, and governance playbooks across our 30+ member backend engineering organization.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 6+ years of verified professional experience operating as an expert-level Backend Java Software Engineer within high-scale distributed environments.
• Deep, practical technical command over multi-threaded programming, JVM memory management, garbage collection (GC) tuning, and raw SQL query optimizations.
• Hands-on operational mastery over cloud-native systems, including extensive configuration background with AWS, K8s, Docker, and Terraform scripts.
• A mature, battle-tested agentic programming practice, with the concrete ability to explain prompt contextualization strategies, multi-agent coordination models, and MCP tool use without becoming a code review bottleneck.
• Excellent analytical decomposition mechanics to translate ambiguous product requirements into precise technical constraints for human and agent orchestration.
• Outstanding written and verbal English communication skills.
• Location Context: 100% remote-first working infrastructure flexibility open to qualified engineers based inside Germany (holding a valid German visa/work permit), or freelance consultants operating seamlessly within the German timezone (CET/CEST).

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Direct production background managing gaming backends (such as real-time matchmaking engines, distributed inventories, high-concurrency leaderboards, or game economy services).
• Experience engineering event-driven architectures utilizing Kafka, AWS Kinesis, or SQS/SNS messaging streams.
• Exposure building real-time telemetry systems, processing high-volume analytics, or designing anti-cheat validation layers.
• Published or open-sourced contributions regarding agentic workflows, subagent scripts, or custom MCP servers.

What We Offer

• The exceptional technical surface area to engineer backend engines that immediately impact gaming telemetry metrics for millions of users worldwide.
• High execution autonomy within an engineering-first, data-driven collaborative MMO pioneer studio.
• Streamlined applicant processing handled directly through optimized Teamtailor applicant tracking loops.
• Flexible work-from-home parameters aligned to foster technical innovation and work-life balance.