Senior Cloud Engineer - Google Cloud -Gaming- £80k

My client is seeking a highly skilled Senior Cloud Developer to guide the evolution of live service architecture and spearhead the development of internal tools and APIs. You will not be working on gameplay logic; instead, you will build the critical infrastructure, pipelines, and Back End services that allow our writers and artists to deliver world-class narrative content to millions of players. You will collaborate with the game team to improve tooling, increase scalability, and lock down our security. Currently, we lean heavily on a GCP serverless stack. We are looking for an expert to help us optimize these services, establish robust DEV/PROD environments, and enforce best practices across the engineering department as we scale.

Responsibilities

• Backend Engineering: Design, build, and optimize scalable serverless microservices and APIs using Node.js (Javascript/TypeScript) on GCP (Cloud Run, Cloud Functions).
• Security & Authentication: Take ownership of our Back End security, designing and enforcing robust authentication and authorization protocols across all internal and external APIs.
• Infrastructure & Environments: Champion the use of Infrastructure as Code (eg, Terraform) to provision GCP and AWS resources, and establish clean separation between DEV, STAGING, and PROD environments.
• Cost & Performance Optimization: Audit and optimize our existing Node.js applications and Cloud Run configurations to improve performance and reduce cloud spend.
• Internal Tooling & Pipelines: Maintain and improve our suite of internal workflow tools (Google AppsScript, Docs/Sheets add-ons) to streamline content ingestion, pipeline management, and testing for our creative teams.
• Mentorship: Offer technical guidance and code reviews to team members, fostering a culture of best practices in security, CI/CD, and cloud architecture.

Qualifications

• Cloud Expertise: Extensive professional experience with Google Cloud Platform (specifically Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, API Gateway, and Cloud Storage).
• Familiarity with AWS (S3, CloudFront, EC2) is a plus.
• Development: Strong, production-level proficiency in TypeScript/Node.js.
• Serverless Ecosystems: Deep understanding of the Firebase ecosystem (Realtime Database, Analytics, Crashlytics, Remote Config).
• Security Mindset: Proven track record of securing APIs, managing secrets, and implementing authentication in serverless environments.
• Infrastructure & Containerization: Practical experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and building optimized Docker containers for deployment.
• Communication: Excellent ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders (writers, artists, producers).

Required Skills

• Experience building and maintaining internal productivity tools using Google AppsScript.
• Familiarity with Python (for Scripting and data pipelines).
• Experience integrating game backends with PlayFab (and Azure CloudScript) or Sentry.io.
• Experience interfacing with Unity (C#) or building tools/SDKs that connect Unity to the Back End.
• Experience working on "Live Service" mobile products with high concurrency.