Sr Software Engineer, Games

About Big Viking Games

Big Viking Games is a Canadian gaming company focused on building, operating, and growing long‑standing online game communities. Our games have entertained players for years, supported by loyal audiences, live operations, evolving content systems, product innovation, and deep player‑driven economies.

Our flagship titles, YoWorld and FishWorld, have served millions of players over their lifetime. These are enduring live‑service virtual worlds with rich in‑game economies, virtual goods, social interaction, and long‑term player engagement at their core.

We are entering a new phase of modernization and growth, with a focus on stronger engineering discipline, better tooling, practical AI adoption, faster iteration, and scalable systems that help our games and teams perform at a higher level.

About the Role

Big Viking Games is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help build, maintain, and modernize our live‑service games and supporting technology. This is a hands‑on engineering role for someone who can design, implement, debug, and optimize game systems, tools, features, and workflows. You will work closely with engineering, product, design, art, QA, and live operations to improve player‑facing experiences and internal development pipelines.

The right person is a strong developer who can work across mature codebases, solve complex technical problems, support live production environments, and help raise the quality and velocity of the engineering team. You should be comfortable contributing directly to code, participating in technical decisions, reviewing work, mentoring other developers, and using modern AI tools responsibly to accelerate development without compromising quality.

This is a hybrid role based in Toronto, with an expectation of working in office three days per week.

What You’ll Do

• Design, implement, test, and maintain clean, efficient, reusable code for gameplay features, tools, systems, and live‑service functionality.
• Build and improve tools that help designers, artists, product managers, and live operations teams work more efficiently.
• Integrate tools and systems into existing content‑creation pipelines and production workflows.
• Work across gameplay systems, UI systems, live‑operations systems, backend integrations, and internal development tools.
• Debug and resolve complex issues in production and development environments.
• Analyze and optimize performance, runtime behavior, memory usage, network behavior, and system reliability.
• Work with networked and online systems, including APIs, real‑time systems, client‑server interactions, and multiplayer or social game features.
• Collaborate with engineers, designers, artists, QA, product managers, and live‑operations stakeholders to ship improvements quickly and responsibly.
• Participate in code reviews and help uphold engineering quality, consistency, and maintainability.
• Maintain clear and useful documentation for code, systems, tools, and project‑related materials.
• Support modernization efforts across large, long‑lived codebases while maintaining production stability.
• Communicate progress, risks, trade‑offs, and technical recommendations clearly to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Use AI coding assistants and automation tools where appropriate to improve productivity, accelerate debugging, and reduce repetitive work.
• Mentor and support other developers through technical guidance, code reviews, and knowledge sharing.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of professional software development experience, ideally in game development, live‑service products, or interactive digital experiences.
• Strong programming skills in C++, C#, TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, or similar languages.
• Experience building, maintaining, and shipping features in live production environments.
• Strong understanding of gameplay systems, tools development, client‑server architecture, APIs, real‑time systems, or online game features.
• Experience working in large, mature, or long‑lived codebases.
• Ability to write clean, simple, well‑documented code from technical and product requirements.
• Strong debugging, troubleshooting, and problem‑solving skills.
• Understanding of performance optimization, system architecture, source control, and software development best practices.
• Comfort working with designers, artists, product managers, QA, and other non‑technical stakeholders.
• Ability to translate general product or design ideas into practical technical solutions.
• Experience working independently and collaboratively in a fast‑moving team environment.
• Familiarity with Agile, Kanban, or similar development methodologies.
• A practical mindset, strong ownership, and a bias toward shipping high‑quality work.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Unity, Unreal Engine, HTML5 game clients, or custom game engines.
• Experience with TypeScript, JavaScript, PHP, C#, C++, or Node.js in production environments.
• Experience with mobile development for Android or iOS.
• Experience with free‑to‑play games, social games, casual games, virtual worlds, or live‑service game operations.
• Experience with game economies, virtual goods, player‑to‑player systems, content pipelines, or live‑event systems.
• Experience with multiplayer, online, networking, sockets, REST APIs, client‑side prediction, synchronization, or latency‑sensitive systems.
• Experience with SQL, MariaDB, Redis, Memcached, caching strategies, or data‑store trade‑offs.
• Experience with Docker, GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines, and modern deployment workflows.
• Experience with performance profilers, memory analyzers, CPU profilers, or network debugging tools.
• Experience with ActionScript, Flash, HTMX, or legacy game technology.
• Experience shipping games on web, mobile, PC, console, or cross‑platform environments.
• Comfort using AI coding assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, or similar tools in a real development workflow.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• The ideal candidate is a senior hands‑on engineer who can operate with ownership, judgment, and technical depth. They are comfortable working in mature systems, improving them incrementally, and balancing modernization with the stability required for live games.
• They do not just write code that works. They understand what the code is doing, why it matters, how it affects players, and how it fits into the broader system. They can move between debugging, feature development, tools work, performance improvement, technical planning, and cross‑functional collaboration.
• This role is best suited for someone who wants to build, improve, and modernize live‑service games with established communities and meaningful product impact.

Compensation

The expected base salary range for this role is CAD $95,000 to $132,000, depending on experience, technical depth, and overall fit.

Benefits

• Group Retirement Savings Plan matching and participation.
• Comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Health and Wellness spending account.
• Generous time‑off policies.
• Opportunity to work on long‑running live‑service games with established player communities.
• Exposure to modernization, AI‑enabled engineering workflows, and high‑impact product initiatives.

Accessibility and Accommodation

Big Viking Games is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible environment for all candidates. We welcome applications from individuals of all abilities and will provide accommodations throughout the hiring process as needed.

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