Senior Backend Engineer

Salary: £65,000 - £75,000 Location: Remote, but within the UK Please note: We are unable to sponsor international visas at this time. About Nexus Mods Established in 2001, Nexus Mods is the largest video game modding platform on the internet - a household name in the PC gaming ecosystem. 71M+ registered members 800K+ mods for 4,000+ games 21B+ mod downloads We’re currently focused on product modernisation, driving growth and building infrastructure for the next 10 years of community-powered modding. Our Role: We’re looking for experienced Senior Backend Engineers to join our backend engineering team behind Nexus Mods’ core services. In this role, you will design, build, and scale the APIs and systems that power Nexus Mods’ ecosystem. This is a chance to work on problems most companies never see: massive scale, complex compatibility, and passionate user communities. From discovery and experimentation, to delivery and scale, you’ll be hands-on in shaping features that directly impact the modding ecosystem: Helping millions of gamers discover, download, and manage mods effortlessly. Empowering creators to publish, distribute, and manage their work with confidence. Building high-traffic APIs that serve millions of requests per hour. Designing backend systems that support both web and desktop applications. Improving performance, scalability, and reliability of critical services. Creating tools that make modding safer, more accessible, easier and more fun. Experimenting with new features and quickly validating ideas with real users. Tackling complex challenges around dependencies, versioning, and compatibility. Identifying and tackling technical debut, ensuring our platform evolves to handle the next decade of growth in gaming. Own significant backend domains and design, build, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs that power mod delivery, installation, publishing, and creator dashboards. Design and deliver scalable, secure, and maintainable systems that support tens of millions of users. Break down complex product requirements into clear technical plans and lead delivery of multi-sprint initiatives. Collaborate closely with other engineering teams to deliver end to end features and support cross-pod integrations. Contribute to product discovery by prototyping APIs, validating technical feasibility, and surfacing trade-offs early. Improve system observability, monitoring, reliability, and operational standards across services. Drive best practices in performance optimisation, database design, security, and data protection. Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code and uphold high standards across testing, CI/CD, and documentation. Help mentor other engineers and continue to share engineering standards across pods. Requirements Deep experience with at least one backend language (Ruby, PHP, Java, Go, Node.js, etc.) and curiosity to learn others. Experience designing and building APIs (REST and/or GraphQL). Solid experience with relational databases (Postgres, MySQL) and familiarity with NoSQL stores (Redis, ElasticSearch). Experience with distributed systems, queues, and event-driven architectures. Production experience with performance optimisation, caching and scalability. Hands-on experience deploying services with CI/CD pipelines and container orchestration (Docker/K8s). Excellent communication skills and ability to work in a cross-functional team. Ability to balance speed, quality and pragmatism in delivery. Bonus Skills Familiarity with Ruby on Rails. Knowledge of authentication, identity management, and payments. Experience with search systems (ElasticSearch, Meilisearch). Understanding of gaming ecosystems (e.g. multiplayer services, content distribution, or digital marketplaces). Experience building tools for creators, modding communities, or user-generated content platforms. Passion for games and mods. Whether that’s tweaking Skyrim load orders, building Minecraft servers, or diving into Baldur’s Gate 3 mods. Benefits: We work a 4-day week of 32 hours, with no reduction in pay. An allowance of £25 each month to spend on video games. Employee Assistance Programme. Private BUPA healthcare for you and your family. A very flexible training budget. Regular social events throughout the year. Participation is optional! Diversity and Inclusion We celebrate diversity and want you to bring your whole self to work. Supporting an incredible community of tens of millions of users, we thrive on engaging as many views as possible to improve our platform. We see no reason why our culture should be any different.