Senior Java Backend & DevOps Engineer – Agentic Engineering

<p><span>We're not looking for someone who has "used Copilot." We're looking for a <strong>Senior Java Backend & DevOps Engineer</strong> 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.</span></p><p><span>You'll 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.</span></p><p><span>In this role you'll join Goodgame Studios – self-published MMO strategy titles, 200M+ registered players, €1B+ in lifetime revenue, part of Stillfront Group, one of Europe's leading game publishers.</span></p><p></p><h2><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-6a43dd90-7fff-4b49-ffb8-df33e33fa048">The role</strong></span></h2><p><span>You own backend services end-to-end: architecture, implementation, infrastructure, deployment, production, scaling. The difference from a traditional senior role is leverage – you're expected to operate at 10–20× 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.</span></p><h2><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-6a43dd90-7fff-4b49-ffb8-df33e33fa048">Your mission</strong></span></h2><ul><li><p><span>Design and operate high-throughput, low-latency Java services (JDK 17+) on AWS, K8s, Terraform, ArgoCD.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Build resilient distributed components and tune memory, concurrency, and GC for real production workloads.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Architect MySQL and Redis layers handling millions of player rows.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Own CI/CD, observability, and on-call for systems you ship.</span></p></li><li><p><span>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.</span></p></li><li><p><span>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.</span></p></li></ul><h2><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-6a43dd90-7fff-4b49-ffb8-df33e33fa048">What you bring</strong></span></h2><ul><li><p><span>6+ years backend Java, expert level. Distributed systems, concurrency, GC tuning, SQL optimisation are second nature.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Deep AWS and cloud-native stack (K8s, Docker, Terraform).</span></p></li><li><p><span>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 you've built with MCP / custom tools / skills, and how you review agent-generated code without becoming a bottleneck.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Strong analytical decomposition – the ability to turn fuzzy product asks into precise constraints both humans and agents can execute against.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Architectural judgement. You design clean, resilient systems; you don't just accept whatever the agent produces.</span></p></li><li><p>Highly proficient in English.</p></li><li><p>Seeking full-time remote roles (within Germany, valid German visa required) or Freelance opportunities within the German timezone (CET/CEST).</p></li></ul><h2><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-6a43dd90-7fff-4b49-ffb8-df33e33fa048">Nice to have</strong></span></h2><ul><li><p><span>Gaming backend experience (matchmaking, inventories, leaderboards, economy services).</span></p></li><li><p><span>Event-driven architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, SQS/SNS).</span></p></li><li><p><span>Real-time telemetry or anti-cheat systems.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Published or shared work on agentic workflows – blog posts, OSS subagents/skills, internal tooling you've open-sourced.</span></p></li></ul><h2><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-6a43dd90-7fff-4b49-ffb8-df33e33fa048">How we'll interview</strong></span></h2><p><span>Expect to walk us through an agentic workflow you've 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 you'd never let an agent do unsupervised. Bring screen-shares, repos, prompts, whatever shows the real thing. We're more interested in your judgement and battle scars than in polished slides.</span></p><h2><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-6a43dd90-7fff-4b49-ffb8-df33e33fa048">Why this role is different</strong></span></h2><ul><li><p><span>You'll work