Lead Server Programmer

Salary: Competitive Salary Offered
Posting Date: 2nd June 2020
Closing Date:  2nd July 2020
Location:  London, UK

The ideal candidate:
The Lead Server Programmer will have a broad range of talents; leading by setting an example within their team, whilst serving as a focal point for communication with the other teams contributing to the project. Meeting our ideals requires both excellent technical and managerial skills.

What you will do

FGOL are looking for an experienced Lead Server Programmer that will be responsible for building a new server team. Reporting directly to the Head of Engineering the responsibilities for the role include designing and implementing the backend for our new exciting projects as well as keeping the current backend up to date. The ideal candidate will have extensive commercial experience in a similar role preferable in the mobile games industry.

PERSONAL TRAITS:

• Strong analytical skills
• Excellent communication skills
• Result-oriented
• Open minded and humble
• Flexible and adaptable to unfolding project needs
• Interested in gaming
• Passion for high-volume concurrent systems!

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead and manage a programming team at technical and personnel level.
• Act as the key technical point of contact for their project
• Mentor junior programmers in the team and plan their skill development
• Determine the technical needs for the team to work on a project
• Evaluate the fitness of internal or external third party middleware in relation to projects
• Contribute to knowledge of best coding practices
• Conduct regular and constructive code reviews
• Setup a process to review solutions, both during development and operations, to identify areas of improvement.
• Work with their team to create and maintain a strong set of technical documents.
• Setup processes while working in collaboration with other teams to efficiently meet the technical needs of the assigned project.
• Plan and evaluate the work performed by team and analyse the impact on the project.
• Identify risks and opportunities presented during the development of solutions, providing solutions to resolve potentially complex problems.
• Accurately estimate time to complete programming tasks/objectives and be committed to meet them.
• Be accountable to the Technical Director in delivering technologies to other groups
• Support the Technical Director in technology-related tasks.

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE: 

• A degree in Computer Science or the equivalent in experience.
• 5+ years of experience of programming in either java or node.js environments
• 1+ years of relevant experience as a team lead on a SaaS project
• Implemented and maintained a SaaS solution serving at least 1 million users, operational for at least 1 year.

SKILLS:

• Designs solutions anticipating both complexity and cost in scaling
• Expert knowledge of either javascript or java, alongside familiarity with the other
• Proficient in usage of AWS; including EC2, EB, DynamoDB, CloudWatch, etc.
• Knowledge of redis or alternative technology
• Proven strengths in debugging problems in multi-instance server environments
• Capable of identifying performance bottlenecks and implementing optimisations
• Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes
• Familiarity git and accepted workflows
• Lead a team in an agile environment
• Excellent English language skills: verbal and written

PLUS:

• Experience gathering requirements from client teams and explaining server technologies to them
• Conversant with C#, especially in the context of Unity3D
• Familiarity with shell scripting
• Exposure to CI pipelines, especially with Gitlab
• Worked on client/server architecture on a game project
   

BENEFITS:

• Flexible office working hours
• 25 days of annual leave + 8 UK Bank holiday + Christmas company day(s) off
• 1 day off if you get married (Wedding Day)
• Sick pay
• Fresh fruit selection delivered 3 times a week, Free monthly breakfasts, Team Lunches
• Beer fridge & Selected wines + other beverages
• Weekly Football, Pool table, ping pong tournaments, poker nights, Office events, social gatherings, Fun Games room
• Birthday Cakes/Cards
• Summer & Christmas parties, Roof terrace area
• Training Budgets
• Contributory pension scheme
• Private healthcare, Reduced gym membership, life insurance, critical illness & Disability cover
• Childcare vouchers
• Season ticket loan (for tube/rail costs), Annual mobile phone/tablet allowance
• Recruitment Referral Fee awards