Lead Software Engineer (LiveOps Platform)

About the company

Playrix is one of the most successful mobile game development companies in the world. In terms of mobile application revenue, we rank first in Europe and are in the top 3 worldwide. Our games have been installed 2.3 billion times (that's a third of the world's population!) and more than 30 million people around the world play them every day.

About the role

We are transforming how our hit mobile games operate post-release. Our core mission is to architect and build a single, highly reliable, and unified LiveOps Platform that manages every operational cycle: from A/B tests and in-game events to balance changes and content delivery across all titles. This platform is the future central nervous system for our game operations.

We are looking for a Hands-On Tech Lead — an engineer who is ready to design the system, drive development with their own high-quality code, and skillfully lead a team of 3-5 engineers. Success requires strong leadership in complex stakeholder management, as this centralized platform impacts all our game studios, product owners, and business analysts.

The team

The LiveOps team is central to the post-release economy and player LTV. We handle everything related to operational flexibility: managing events, offers, experimentation, game balance, configurations, schedules, and feature rollout.

The team is responsible for delivering the core platform and tools that allow product teams to rapidly iterate, manage the game economy, and run complex experiments efficiently. You will collaborate closely with game designers, producers, analysts, and ML/AI engineers to define requirements and deliver the infrastructure that enables fast, predictable operations.

Tasks

• Architectural Leadership: Define and own the technical architecture of the LiveOps Platform, ensuring maximum reliability, scalability, and integration capability across all game projects
• Hands-On Development (50%+): Write high-quality, high-performance code, especially for core services and integrations. Act as the primary technical problem solver
• Platform Development: Build tools and services for centralized management of A/B tests, configurations, feature flags, game balance, and content delivery
• Process Automation: Automate the end-to-end LiveOps process chain to reduce manual effort, increase the speed of experiments, and provide transparent data flow for product teams
• Engineering Mentorship: Lead the engineering team (3–5 people) in technical best practices, code quality (reviews, design reviews), and effective engineering processes
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Manage technical debt, communicate complex trade-offs, and align the platform roadmap with the demanding needs of multiple game studios and business stakeholders

Our stack

Python 3.10+, Django, React.JS, Redis, AWS, TeamCity

Requirements

• Fluency in Russian
• 6+ years of experience in designing, building, and operating highly reliable backend systems
• Experience leading a small engineering team (3–5 people) or acting as a technical lead for a core project
• Excellent development skills in Python
• Proven ability to lead technical architecture and build complex services from scratch — from initial database design to deployment strategy
• Deep expertise in system design principles: scalability, fault tolerance, message queues, caching strategies, transactionality, and API contracts
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD, containerization, deployment, and monitoring
• A strong focus on operational excellence: implementation of logging, alerting, comprehensive testing, and resilient failover architectures

Preferred

• Experience with A/B testing platforms, real-time event processing, and complex configuration systems
• Practical knowledge of game economy principles or experience in the mobile gaming industry.
• Experience building effective UI/UX tools (dashboards, configurators) for internal, non-technical users

Our PerksFlexibility at work

• For most positions, we offer a flexible schedule, and employees can work from anywhere in the world (except for the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus). You can do your work however and wherever you like — we only evaluate your results.

Caring for health and well-being

• We provide voluntary health insurance for employees and their children, and reimburse online sessions with a psychologist.
• We offer fully paid vacation days and sick leave. In certain circumstances, you can request additional days off.
• We support leading a healthy lifestyle and reimburse the cost of gym memberships and fitness app subscriptions.

Professional development and education

• We pay for participation in specialized conferences and courses and hold our own internal conferences.
• We offer discounts on English language courses and courses for the languages of the countries in which the company operates.

Events and merch

• We regularly hold offline events like team meetings, big corporate parties, and informal office parties.
• We also regularly organize fun competitions, quizzes, hackathons, and online fitness challenges.
• We have a merch store with an internal currency you can use to buy unique gifts. We give out this currency as a gift for significant dates, and you can earn more by participating in events and company activities.