Lead Software Engineer - Python

• Job Title - Lead Software Engineer - Python

• Reports to - Senior Manager of Software Engineering

• Application Closing Date - 27/11/2023

• Location - Hybrid / Leamington Spa

A Little Bit about Kwalee….

Kwalee is a games publisher and developer based in Leamington Spa, UK, which boasts more than 1 billion installs on mobile platforms with games such as Teacher Simulator, Draw it, Bake It, Shootout 3D, Rocket Sky! and Line Up: Draw the Criminal. The company also publishes a growing catalogue of PC and console titles including Eternal Hope, Tens, Scathe, and Wildmender along with the upcoming titles ROBOBEAT, Space Chef, The Precinct and The Spirit of the Samurai.

Founded by games industry icon and Codemasters co-founder David Darling CBE, who is joined by a fast-growing team of global gaming experts with studios in the UK, India, Portugal and China and remote team members all over the world, Kwalee is on the lookout for high-quality games to publish on all platforms and encourages developers to get in touch.

Outside of its games, Kwalee is also highly active in the industry, as an ambassador of not-for-profit organisation Women in Games and a regular supporter of the charity SpecialEffect.

What’s In It For You?

• Hybrid working - 3 days in the office, 2 days remote/ WFH is the norm
• Flexible working hours - we trust you to choose how and when you work best
• A dog friendly office (There’s dog-free areas too, if pooches aren’t your thing)
• Profit sharing scheme - we win, you win
• Private medical cover
• Life Assurance - for long term peace of mind
• On site gym - take care of yourself
• Relocation support - available
• VISA Sponsorship - available
• Quarterly Team Building days - we’ve done Paintballing, Go Karting & even Ninja Warrior

• Pitch and make your own games on Creative Wednesdays!

• Kwalee Artificial Intelligence (K.A.I) - win prizes for proposing useful AI initiatives

Are You Up To The Challenge?

As a Lead Software Engineer - Python, you will be a key member of our technical team. With millions of players across the globe and large amounts of data generated daily, you will be at the forefront of the challenge to architect and develop the server-side components that power our games, as well as critical internal services, that can scale efficiently to meet demand. You will lead a talented group of backend engineers, guiding them through the design, implementation, and maintenance using modern architecture and design ideas.

Your Team Mates

The software engineering team is central in developing the technology behind the development, growth and ongoing monetisation of our games. We are a cross functional team that consists of analysts, engineers and data scientists, who work to deliver products spanning our modern, cloud first, tech stack.

What Does The Job Actually Involve?

• Lead a team of backend developers, providing technical guidance and oversight.
• Iterate on multiple existing essential back-end services, including our ML marketing spend software and gameplay optimisation engine.
• Contribute to the architecture and design of new services, using modern Python practices and libraries, for example FastAPI, deploying to a containerised environment.
• Interface with other teams, from front-end to marketing, to define system requirements, implement feature requests and mitigate integration challenges.
• Work with relational, NoSQL, and search-optimised databases containing large amounts of data populated by high-throughput endpoints.
• Keep up to date with the ever changing industry best practices and available tools to make recommendations for improvements and continue innovation across the technology stack.

Your Hard Skills

• A proven track record of designing and developing high quality server-side program code to facilitate RESTful APIs capable of handling a high throughput of requests.
• In-depth knowledge of, and experience working with, database management systems (SQL, NoSQL) and data modelling. Experience with large datasets, data warehouses and data lakes would be an advantage.
• Expertise in cloud platforms, preferably AWS, and containerisation technologies such as Docker.
• Familiarity with Git version control and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong experience in leading and managing a team of backend developers.

Your Soft Skills

Kwalee has grown fast in recent years but we’re very much a family of colleagues. We welcome people of all ages, races, colours, beliefs, sexual orientations, genders and circumstances, and all we ask is that you collaborate, work hard, ask questions and have fun with your team and colleagues.

We don’t like egos or arrogance and we love playing games and celebrating success together. If that sounds like you, then please apply.

A Little More About Kwalee

Founded in 2011 by David Darling CBE, a key architect of the UK games industry who previously co-founded and led Codemasters, our team also includes legends such as Andrew Graham (creator of Micro Machines series) and Jason Falcus (programmer of classics including NBA Jam) alongside a growing and diverse team of global gaming experts.

Everyone contributes creatively to Kwalee’s success, with all employees eligible to pitch their own game ideas on Creative Wednesdays, and we’re proud to have built our success on this inclusive principle.

We have an amazing team of experts collaborating daily between our studios in Leamington Spa, Lisbon, Bangalore and Beijing, or on a remote basis from Turkey, Brazil, Cyprus, the Philippines and many more places around the world. We’ve recently acquired our first external studio, TicTales, which is based in France.

We have a truly global team making games for a global audience, and it’s paying off: - Kwalee has been voted the Best Large Studio and Best Leadership Team at the TIGA Awards (Independent Game Developers’ Association) and our games have been downloaded in every country on earth - including Antarctica!