Blacklight Studio Works - Backend Developer - Node.js/Golang

Description :

About the Role :

We build real-time multiplayer mobile games where milliseconds matter. As a Backend Developer on our team, you'll own the systems that power live gameplay for thousands of concurrent players - matchmaking, game state sync, leaderboards, player progression, and the WebSocket infrastructure that ties it all together. You'll ship to production frequently and have a direct impact on how our games actually feel to play.
We're language-agnostic and AI-native in how we build.

What You'll Do :

- Build and maintain low-latency WebSocket services and REST APIs that thousands of mobile clients depend on

- Optimize for the realities of mobile gameplay : spiky traffic, dropped connections, variable network quality, and concurrent player scale

- Collaborate with game developers, product, and ops to ship features players actually feel

- Write code that's debuggable in production - good logging, metrics, and tracing are table

stakes here

- Use AI coding tools as a daily multiplier - and own what you ship

What We're Looking For :

- Strong with at least one of Go, Node.js/TypeScript, or Java/Spring Boot - and open to picking up the others

- Solid grasp of REST API design, auth patterns, and HTTP fundamentals

- Solid knowledge of relational and in-memory databases - SQL at minimum

- Pragmatic with AI coding tools - you use them well and know when not to

Nice to Have :

- Familiarity with message queues / streaming - GCP Pub/Sub, Kafka, NATS

- Exposure to game-specific concerns : anti-cheat, server-authoritative state, tick-rate trade-offs, deterministic simulation

- Open-source contributions or side projects we can look at

Why Join Us :

- Ship features that thousands of players hit on day one - short feedback loop, real impact

- Modern stack, modern tooling, and a team that treats AI-assisted development as a first-class workflow

- Small enough that your decisions matter, with backend peers to learn from