Senior Java Backend & DevOps Engineer – Agentic Engineering

Were not looking for someone who has used Copilot. Were looking for a Senior Java Backend & DevOps Engineer who already runs agentic workflows as a core part of how they ship multiple Claude Code / Codex / Cursor agents in parallel custom subagents MCP servers skills planning loops review gates and who has opinions about which patterns actually work in production versus which ones look good in demos.

Youll bring that practice to backend systems that keep entire game worlds alive for millions of players. Always-on low-latency unpredictable load. Real player impact when something is off by 20 ms.

In this role youll join Goodgame Studios self-published MMO strategy titles 200M registered players 1B in lifetime revenue part of Stillfront Group one of Europes leading game publishers.

The role

You own backend services end-to-end: architecture implementation infrastructure deployment production scaling. The difference from a traditional senior role is leverage youre expected to operate at 1020 the throughput of a classical engineer by orchestrating agents rather than typing every line yourself. You stay the architect and the reviewer. The agents do the volume.

Your mission

• Design and operate high-throughput low-latency Java services (JDK 17) on AWS K8s Terraform ArgoCD.

• Build resilient distributed components and tune memory concurrency and GC for real production workloads.

• Architect MySQL and Redis layers handling millions of player rows.

• Own CI/CD observability and on-call for systems you ship.

• Run an agentic workflow that holds up under code review: precise specs tight feedback loops generated tests validation gates your judgement as the final filter on architecture security and performance.

• Help define how the rest of the engineering org adopts agentic practices tooling review standards what done means when an agent wrote 80% of the diff.

What you bring

• 6 years backend Java expert level. Distributed systems concurrency GC tuning SQL optimisation are second nature.

• Deep AWS and cloud-native stack (K8s Docker Terraform).

• A real agentic coding practice. You can talk concretely about: how you structure prompts and context for long-running tasks when you let an agent run autonomously vs. when you intervene how you manage multi-agent setups what youve built with MCP / custom tools / skills and how you review agent-generated code without becoming a bottleneck.

• Strong analytical decomposition the ability to turn fuzzy product asks into precise constraints both humans and agents can execute against.

• Architectural judgement. You design clean resilient systems; you dont just accept whatever the agent produces.

• Excellent written English.

• Seeking full-time remote roles (within Germany valid German visa required) or Freelance opportunities within the German timezone (CET/CEST).

Nice to have

• Gaming backend experience (matchmaking inventories leaderboards economy services).

• Event-driven architectures (Kafka Kinesis SQS/SNS).

• Real-time telemetry or anti-cheat systems.

• Published or shared work on agentic workflows blog posts OSS subagents/skills internal tooling youve open-sourced.

How well interview

Expect to walk us through an agentic workflow youve actually built and used the specs and context you feed it how you structure the loop where it breaks how you catch it and what youd never let an agent do unsupervised. Bring screen-shares repos prompts whatever shows the real thing. Were more interested in your judgement and battle scars than in polished slides.

Why this role is different

• Youll work on systems players interact with every minute at a scale where engineering decisions show up immediately in metrics.

• Youll help set the bar for what agentic engineering looks like in a 30 person backend org that ships real products not a lab not a pilot.

• High autonomy. Remote within the German time zone. Engineering-first culture.

• Genuinely interesting technical surface area: Java MySQL Redis AWS distributed systems plus the meta-problem of how to run all of it agentically without sacrificing reliability.

Collaborate closely with our 30 dedicated professionals at Goodgame Studios employ your initiative and strong communication skills to seamlessly integrate your ideas into our MMO pioneer games with more than 200 million registered players worldwide and a history of more than 1bn in revenues. If youre ready to take on this challenge and thrive in a high-target environment we want you on our team!

Goodgame Studios is known for successful strategy titles and data-driven game development. We self-publish our games in-house and have all relevant professions under one roof. Plus we are part of Stillfront Group one of Europes leading game publishers with a strong focus on long-term IP growth.