Senior Server Programmer in Royal Leamington Spa

Based in the heart of Leamington Spa, Pixel Toys have spent over a decade pushing the capabilities of mobile gaming. We have developed multiple award-winning titles, including: Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realm War; and we’re now excited to be exclusively working on a new game, unlike ANYTHING we’ve done previously! As a forward thinking and innovative studio we are always looking for new technologies and techniques to develop and use in our games and make them even more engaging experiences for our customers. We are excited to continue to grow our team and are always on the lookout for highly talented and motivated individuals, who are passionate about gaming and excited to join us on our ambitious journey!

The Role: As a Senior Server Engineer at Pixel Toys, you will be a technical guardian of our next-gen backends, building the high-performance infrastructure that powers our epic AAA mobile title. You will step into a position of significant influence, collaborating with your peers to set studio-wide standards, define robust processes, and drive our technology forward in an ever-evolving market. In our flexible and creative environment, you won’t just follow a spec; you will contribute your own architectural vision to create sophisticated, efficient server systems that can handle the demands of a global player base. Your work will be the invisible backbone that allows our games to shine, as you work in lockstep with Designers, Artists, and client Developers to integrate and optimize critical game technologies.

Taking full ownership of the planning and development for entire features and complex systems, you will confidently ensure that every line of code is as stable as it is performant. Much of your impact will come from your ability to create thorough technical designs that invite peer validation, ensuring that quality is baked into the product from day one. You will dive deep into profiling and optimising critical code, identifying performance bottlenecks and security risks before they ever impact the user experience. On top of this, you will serve as a vital mentor to junior team members, advocating for coding best practices and fostering a culture of continuous learning. By leveraging your years of experience to accurately estimate tasks and proactively mitigate risks, you will be the steady hand that ensures our sprint goals are met and our technical debt remains low.

About you: You will join us as a seasoned engineering veteran, ideally bringing years of professional server application development to the team. Your mastery of C# is matched by a deep, architectural understanding of coding patterns and methodologies that allow you to build for both scale and longevity. You will possess a diverse technical palette, with hands-on experience across a wide variety of database solutions, including DynamoDB, Redis, and AWS RDS; along with a thorough knowledge of cloud platforms like AWS. You are also someone who values observability, bringing familiarity with monitoring tools like Datadog, Kibana, or PagerDuty, and have a firm grasp of CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, Codebuild, or Spinnaker.

In an Agile environment, you stand out as a creative problem solver who approaches every challenge with a proactive, "can-do" attitude. As an exceptional communicator, you are capable of distilling complex server architecture into clear, actionable insights for stakeholders across all disciplines. Your commitment to technical quality is unwavering, and you take pride in your ability to troubleshoot and resolve intricate compatibility issues with precision. Above all, you are fueled by a genuine passion for the art of game making and a desire to stay at the cutting edge of C# .NET and server security. You are a self-motivated team player who doesn’t just deliver code, but excellence, helping to elevate the standard of the entire engineering department.

What can Pixel Toys offer? At Pixel Toys we are proud of the progressive, inclusive, and collaborative working environment we have created; a place where everyone has the opportunity to be themselves and is welcomed and valued for who they are and what they contribute. We have some fantastic benefits we offer our employees… Here are just some of them:

• Competitive salary, reviewed annually
• 25 days annual leave, excluding bank holidays
• Discretionary Bonus Scheme
• Up to 3 additional long service days (duvet days!)
• Private Medical Insurance (including optical and dental)
• Company Pension scheme
• Death in Service benefit
• Regular socials including epic summer and Christmas parties!
• Staff training and development
• Quarterly Wellness days (On-site massages and more)
• Flexi-time working hours