Staff Systems Software Engineer
Remote US & Canada
About this role
Most engineering roles at Thatgamecompany ship features to players. This one ships velocity and quality to engineers. Cloud, Gameplay Backend, and Cross-Platform Backend build the services and features the game runs on; you build the systems that prove that work is correct, fast, and ready — before it reaches players. You will build the systems that prove the gameplay feature works — at scale, on every device, on every commit — and the infrastructure that lets a hundred engineers find that out in minutes instead of days. If it runs in production, another team owns it. If it exists to test, measure, or accelerate what those teams build — test harnesses, load/chaos infrastructure, device labs, build/GPU clusters — you own it. Your output is the studio's velocity and the game's quality floor.
On any given day, you might:
Prove correctness and quality before players find the bugs
Build and own the studio's functional test automation framework — runner, fixtures, game-state harness, reporting — plus coverage instrumentation that makes untested systems visible
Build regression analysis tooling that separates real regressions from noise and attributes them to a commit automatically
Improve test suite speed/trust via flake detection, quarantine, parallel sharding, deterministic replay
Find the breaking point on purpose
Design load/stress testing systems modeling realistic player behavior, capable of driving launch-scale synthetic traffic against pre-production
Build chaos testing capability — fault injection, latency/partition simulation, dependency failure — run safely against real infrastructure
Run disaster recovery exercises, measure actual RTO/RPO vs. stated targets, and turn findings into permanent regression tests
Prove quality on real devices
Build app quality testing automation — frame time, memory, thermal, battery, cold-start captured automatically and gated in CI
Own the device compatibility lab, orchestration, and certification matrix so device support is verified every commit, not the week before ship
Own the infrastructure engineers build on
Build/operate on-prem build clusters (distributed compilation, caching, artifacts) and on-prem GPU clusters (scheduling, multi-tenancy, utilization), backing buy-vs-build with real data
Design cross-platform developer tools — including AI-assisted tooling (agents, skills, MCP servers) — that reduce toil across Cloud, Backend, and Client Engineering
Make it land
Define, instrument, and publish developer velocity/quality metrics (build time, test cycle time, flake rate, escaped defect rate, MTTR) and use them to prioritize your roadmap
Drive adoption across teams that don't report to you
Mentor engineers in testing strategy, performance analysis, systems thinking
Raise the bar through code review, documentation, reducing bus factor
We expect you to
Be a passionate gamer who puts players first
Treat developer experience as a product — users, adoption curves, a quality bar — not internal plumbing
Operate at Staff level: set technical direction studio-wide, influence without authority
Be relentless about systems that prevent problems, not just report them
Embrace experimentation for ambiguous, complex problems
Communicate trade-offs clearly across distributed teams
Required Skills
Languages: Python, Golang, C/C++, Jenkins Groovy; Linux shell scripting; fluent English
Testing & Quality Systems: Test framework design; load/stress tooling (k6, Locust, Gatling, JMeter); fault injection/chaos engineering; coverage instrumentation; flake detection
Performance & Analysis: CPU/GPU/memory/I/O profiling; statistical analysis of noisy benchmarks; regression detection and commit attribution; observability
Build & CI at Scale: Jenkins/GitLab CI/CD; Make/CMake; GCC/Clang; distributed build systems/caching; Git/GitLab and Perforce (large-binary workflows)
Infrastructure: Linux/macOS administration; bare-metal/on-prem cluster ops; Docker/Podman; Kubernetes; Terraform/OpenTofu; hardware capacity planning
Systems Fundamentals: Distributed systems failure modes; TCP/IP and UDP; resilience patterns; disaster recovery planning and execution
Preferred Skills
Mobile device farm operation, Android/iOS build and profiling toolchains, GPU cluster scheduling (Slurm, K8s device plugins, MIG), game engine internals/engine-level test automation, deterministic simulation/replay testing, live service game experience (or SaaS/PaaS/XaaS equivalent), Windows administration, Ansible, TypeScript/Java/Kotlin/Swift, hybrid/multi-cloud management
Perks:
Paid Time Off, Holidays and Two Weeks Winter Break
Employees and their dependents get medical, dental, and vision coverage, regardless of their level, tenure, or position within the company. Moreover, these benefits start on the first day of the job—there’s no waiting period before they kick in.
Pet Insurance for those who need it too.
Compassionate leave for employees who needs to take care of their family members
Pre-tax wellness stipend
Pre-tax work from home stipend
Access our savings plan (401K program) with company match
Mental health resources including Headspace membership and Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
Discount portal for everyday goods and services
Employee inclusive and diversity initiatives such as Grow Together
Support for personal professional development
We look forward to meeting you!
Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.
The salary range for this position is $162,500 USD to $219,000 USD annually, with the opportunity to earn an annual discretionary bonus. This salary range is an estimate, and the actual salary may vary based on the Company’s compensation practices. Employees in this position are eligible to participate in the Company’s standard employee benefit programs, which currently include the following: medical, dental, vision, 401k, and paid time off.
Our base pay is benchmarked against regional market and industry data and is adjusted to reflect the cost of living in your specific geographic area.
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