DevOps/Backend Engineer

Location: Remote (Preferably European time zones)

About the Company

Near Prime is looking for a DevOps/Backend Engineer for one of our partner projects, who are redefining the Game Development world with a one-of-a-kind cube-shaped gaming console that merges the physical and digital worlds. This kind of Entertainment System combines modular hardware, immersive software, and creative game design to create a brand-new category of interactive entertainment.

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced DevOps / Backend Engineer to build and maintain the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cloud infrastructure and backend services powering the company’s ecosystem.

This role places a strong emphasis on DevOps ownership, combined with hands-on backend development using Node.js, TypeScript, and NestJS. You will ensure the company’s services are deployed securely, operate reliably, and scale with the product, while contributing to systems supporting user accounts, the game catalog, purchases, and communication with the game console devices.

You will work closely with frontend, mobile, embedded, and QA engineers, taking ownership of cloud infrastructure and service delivery through deployment, monitoring, and production troubleshooting. You will also manage corporate access and support teams working extensively with AI coding tools, helping them iterate quickly while maintaining engineering quality and operational reliability.

Key Responsibilities
Build, maintain, and optimize the company’s GCP cloud infrastructure, supporting the website, mobile applications, and connected devices.
Automate cloud infrastructure provisioning and configuration using infrastructure as code.
Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines for automated testing, building, and deployment, including reliable rollback procedures.
Manage Docker and Kubernetes environments, including service configuration, networking, service discovery, and scaling.
Set up and improve monitoring, logging, and alerting across cloud infrastructure and backend services.
Troubleshoot production incidents across application, cloud infrastructure, networking, and database layers; implement fixes that prevent recurrence.
Develop and maintain backend services and REST APIs using Node.js, TypeScript, and NestJS.
Build and support microservices and event-driven workflows using gRPC, Protocol Buffers, and RabbitMQ.
Maintain and optimize MongoDB deployments and queries, including backup and recovery procedures.
Strengthen platform security through access controls, secrets management, TLS certificates, and secure service-to-service communication.
Manage employee access to corporate systems, tools, and services, including creating accounts during onboarding, updating permissions as roles change, and revoking access and deleting accounts during offboarding.
Collaborate on device integrations, telemetry processing, and reliable communication between hardware and cloud services.
Support AI-assisted development and vibe coding teams with suitable development environments, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment safeguards.
Use AI tools to optimize processes, reduce repetitive work, and build engineering and operational workflows, evaluating their correctness, security, and practical value.
Maintain technical documentation, operational runbooks, and automated tests; participate in code reviews.

Requirements
5+ years of commercial engineering experience spanning DevOps, cloud infrastructure, and backend development, with hands-on ownership of production systems.
Hands-on production experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including provisioning, operating, securing, and troubleshooting cloud infrastructure. The comapny’s cloud infrastructure runs on GCP; experience exclusively with AWS or Azure is insufficient for this role.
Strong experience administering Linux environments and troubleshooting networking, resource usage, and application issues.
Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes in production.
Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and automating cloud infrastructure with Terraform or equivalent tools.
Practical backend development experience with Node.js, TypeScript, and NestJS, including writing and maintaining production application code.
Solid understanding of REST APIs, authentication, authorization, versioning, and rate limiting.
Experience with microservices and asynchronous messaging, including RabbitMQ routing, message durability, retries, and back-pressure.
Familiarity with gRPC and Protocol Buffers for interservice communication.
Experience with MongoDB, including data modeling, indexing, performance troubleshooting, and backup strategies.
Good understanding of TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, TLS, and Nginx as a reverse proxy.
Experience with monitoring, centralized logging, alerting, and production incident investigation.
Understanding of corporate access management, including account provisioning, permission management, and secure offboarding.
Proficiency in scripting with Bash or Python, alongside Git and automated testing.
Strong, practical enthusiasm for AI-assisted coding, combined with sound engineering judgment: understanding where AI accelerates delivery, where it introduces risk, and how to validate its output.
Understanding of the processes and needs of AI-assisted development and vibe coding teams, including rapid iteration, agent workflows, automated testing, code review, and safe deployment.
Experience using AI tools to optimize processes and design and implement engineering or operational workflows.
A personal Git repository or portfolio of repositories showcasing AI coding experiments, tools, agents, or workflow automations, with the ability to explain implementation decisions, results, and limitations. Private repositories can be presented through a walkthrough.
Ability to work independently, prioritize operational and development needs, and communicate clearly within a distributed team.

Desirable Pluses
Experience with MQTT, IoT platforms, or backend systems communicating with physical devices.
Experience with certificate lifecycle management and secure device authentication.
Familiarity with OTA update delivery and device telemetry pipelines.
Experience with ClickHouse or other analytical databases.
Experience with observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry.
Familiarity with Helm, GitOps workflows, and monorepo architectures.
Familiarity with SSO, identity providers, and role-based access management for corporate tools.
Experience with Vitest or Jest.
Previous experience supporting gaming platforms, connected consumer hardware, or systems combining web, mobile, and embedded components.