Senior Software Engineer II, Backend

Who We Are

Second Dinner is an award-winning independent game development studio that is here to make the most fun games in the world. Not super fun games. Not SUPER DUPER fun games. We mean the MOST fun games. In fact, our game MARVEL SNAP has earned multiple Mobile Game of the Year Awards (Game Awards, DICE), Best Strategy Game (IGN), and the Apple Design Award for Innovation!

Second Dinner is a remote-first studio, so while we are headquartered in Irvine, California, most of our team is fully remote across the United States. We want the most talented teammates wherever they call home. A diverse team with varied perspectives makes us a better company and will help us make better games. If you can bring something new to the table and expand our point of view, that's a huge upside. 

Our Engineering Team

At Second Dinner, we believe that great people in a great work environment will lead us to great games and player experiences. In engineering, we empower our team to build and innovate with best-in-class tools in ways they haven't been used before. Our goal is to leverage the most powerful technologies available and be on the cutting edge of the gaming industry, developing cloud-native distributed architecture and leveraging AI for productivity and enhanced gameplay experiences.

Your Role

You will be a core member of the backend engineering team, partnering with gameplay and feature engineers as well as other server engineers to deliver new experiences for our players built on a fast, reliable platform. If you love programming and collaborating with extraordinarily talented cross-functional teams, then APPLY!

What You’ll Do:

• Actively participate in architecture discussions, code reviews, and idea sharing

• Design and lead the integration of new features into a cloud-native server stack

• Demonstrate initiative in taking ownership of key system components

• Implement and refine tools and frameworks for cross-discipline development teams

• Be part of the on-call rotation to ensure server uptime

• Enable rapid feature development without cutting quality

• Create and maintain documentation for live ops, debugging, and general knowledge

What You’ll Need:

• The skills necessary to write simple, readable, and maintainable code

• Strong experience operating multi-region services in AWS or other cloud providers

• Familiarity deploying and maintaining cloud native applications using Infrastructure as Code tools

• Extensive experience building and optimizing applications in .NET/C# or similar languages

• Experience configuring observability tools and troubleshooting live service issues

• Hands-on experience with cloud data storage, such as AWS S3, or DynamoDB

• Ability to identify security vulnerabilities

• Awesome technical and personal communication skills

• Passion for playing and making great games

Nice to Have, But Not Necessary:

• Experience with serverless applications on AWS

• Experience with globally scalable distributed systems

• Experience with data processing and analytics tools

• Experience with Git

• Experience with machine learning services

• Game development experience

The total compensation for this position includes a new hire offer base salary range of $180,000 to $235,000 USD + equity + comprehensive benefits + potential for discretionary performance bonuses.

Individual pay within this salary range may span multiple levels within the discipline and is determined by assessed job-related skills, experience, relevant education, or training. It also factors in market demands and business needs. The disclosed range is not adjusted based on location and may be subject to change or modification based on business needs in the future. Your recruiter can answer any questions about new hire total compensation during the hiring process.

An overview of the benefits and perks at Second Dinner:

• Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance plans with Second Dinner paying 100% of premiums for employees and 75% for dependents for many plans

• 401(k) contribution with no waiting period

• 16 weeks paid parental leave with no waiting period

• Home office improvement bonus

• Paid Vacation & Sick time

• Up to 10 BetterHelp sessions covered each benefits plan year

• Remote-first with core overlap hours between 10AM and 4PM PT

• Company Winter Holiday shutdown (Dec 25-Jan 1)

• Company Summer Holiday shutdown (week of July 4)

• Company Events - In-person Summer all-hands gathering, in-person holiday party, and virtual events throughout the year

We are an equal opportunity employer that places high value on diversity and inclusion. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, disability status, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, military status, or veteran status. 

You must be eligible to work in the United States to be considered for this position.