Senior Backend Engineer

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Legend Story Studios – Newmarket, North Island

Position Overview

We’re looking for a Backend Engineer to help build, evolve, and operate the digital platform that powers Legend Story Studios’ products and global competitive play ecosystem.

This is a hands‑on engineering role focused on backend systems, APIs, cloud infrastructure, integrations, reliability, and production delivery. You’ll work closely with the Technical Lead, Product, Design, and other engineers to build scalable systems that support players, retailers, tournament organisers, partners, and internal teams around the world.

You’ll work across:

• Digital products supporting Flesh and Blood, including GEM and related platforms

• Backend services, APIs, and data systems

• B2B and B2C integrations

• Cloud infrastructure and deployment workflows

• Internal tools and operational systems

You’ll contribute from early discovery and technical design through to implementation, deployment, production support, and ongoing improvement.

If you enjoy solving technical problems, building reliable services, and working on products used by a global community, this role is for you.

What You’ll Do

Product & Technical Delivery

• Collaborate with Product, Design, and Engineering to translate product goals into practical technical solutions.

• Build and deliver backend features across our digital products and internal systems.

• Use proof of concepts, prototypes, and MVPs to validate technical approaches.

• Design and implement APIs for internal systems, customer‑facing products, and third‑party integrations.

• Own the work you build through development, testing, deployment, and production support.

• Balance delivery needs with reliability, maintainability, and long‑term platform health.

• Work across new product development, business‑as‑usual delivery, operational support, and technical improvement.

• Help turn complex business processes into reliable and usable product features.

Backend Engineering & Systems Design

• Contribute to the design of scalable, secure, and highly available systems.

• Participate in decisions about architecture, service boundaries, and technology choices.

• Build backend services that support global usage and continued product growth.

• Follow and improve established engineering patterns, standards, and best practices.

• Apply domain modelling and systems‑thinking principles to complex product areas.

• Design for performance, reliability, maintainability, and operational clarity.

• Communicate technical trade‑offs clearly with engineers and non‑technical stakeholders.

• Improve existing systems pragmatically while reducing complexity and technical risk.

APIs, Integrations & Data

• Design and develop REST and GraphQL APIs.

• Build integrations with internal systems, external platforms, partners, and third‑party services.

• Work with relational databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL.

• Improve data access patterns, query performance, integrity, and maintainability.

• Contribute to event‑driven and service‑oriented systems where appropriate.

• Consider the experience of internal and external teams integrating with our APIs.

• Ensure integrations are observable, resilient, secure, and well supported.

Cloud, DevOps & Production Operations

• Work with AWS infrastructure and cloud‑based application environments.

• Use Infrastructure as Code tools such as AWS CDK.

• Build and support containerised applications using Docker.

• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, deployment safety, and developer workflows.

• Support observability, monitoring, logging, and alerting practices.

• Diagnose and resolve production issues.

• Improve platform performance, security, reliability, and availability.

• Help ensure systems are production‑ready and can be operated sustainably over time.

Engineering Quality

• Participate in code reviews and contribute to strong testing and maintainability standards.

• Work collaboratively with other engineers to solve technical problems.

• Share knowledge and contribute to continuous improvement across the team.

• Take ownership of assigned systems and features through to production.

• Raise risks and technical concerns early.

• Challenge assumptions constructively when a simpler, safer, or more maintainable approach exists.

• Support a practical engineering culture focused on quality and delivery.

What We’re Looking For

Must‑Haves

• Strong experience building and delivering modern backend systems, APIs, and web applications.

• Proven experience working with production systems.

• Strong backend engineering capability, with Python and Django preferred.

• Good understanding of REST and GraphQL API design.

• Strong relational database experience, including PostgreSQL and/or MySQL.

• Hands‑on experience with AWS cloud environments.

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, such as Terraform or AWS CDK.

• Docker and containerisation experience.

• Experience working with CI/CD pipelines.

• Understanding of modern DevOps and production engineering practices.

• Experience building scalable backend services.

• Good understanding of performance optimisation, availability, and system reliability.

• Experience integrating with third‑party APIs and external platforms.

• Strong Git and modern software development workflow experience.

• Experience working in cross‑functional, product‑led teams.

• Ability to communicate technical concepts and trade‑offs clearly.

• Strong ownership and problem‑solving skills.

Important for This Role

• Ability to move between detailed implementation and broader system considerations.

• Confidence working through technical ambiguity.

• Ability to balance delivery speed with reliability and maintainability.

• Comfortable working with evolving systems and improving them over time.

• Ability to balance project work, production support, technical debt, and continuous improvement.

• Ownership of work through development, deployment, and production operation.

• Ability to communicate effectively with technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

• Comfortable challenging ideas constructively.

• Pragmatic and adaptable rather than tied to a single pattern, tool, or technology.

• Comfortable working across multiple products, integrations, and operational systems.

Nice‑to‑Haves

• Experience in fast‑moving product, scale‑up, or startup environments.

• Familiarity with event‑driven systems.

• Experience applying domain modelling principles.

• Experience building platforms for global user bases.

• Experience creating developer‑friendly APIs for third‑party integrations.

• Knowledge of service‑oriented or microservice architectures.

• Experience with security, privacy, or compliance considerations in production systems.

• Interest in UX and player‑facing digital experiences.

• Interest in trading card games, gaming, fantasy worlds, or fan‑driven products.

How You’ll Fit In

You’ll be part of a small, cross‑functional digital product team made up of:

• Product Owner

• Technical Lead

• Backend Engineers

• Frontend Engineer

• Web Coordinator

• Product, creative, and marketing stakeholders

You’ll work across:

• Product — building backend capability for GEM and other digital products.

• Platform — improving APIs, cloud infrastructure, shared services, and application architecture.

• Integrations — connecting internal products with partners and external platforms.

• Internal tools — supporting workflows and systems used across the business.

• Operations — improving reliability, deployment, monitoring, and production support.

This is a collaborative role, not a silo. You’ll work closely with Product, Engineering, Design, Creative, and other stakeholders to deliver reliable technical outcomes.

You’ll help bridge:

• Product ideas → practical backend solutions

• Business workflows → reliable services

• External platforms → secure integrations

• Technical designs → production delivery

• Production issues → sustainable improvements

Who This Role Suits

This role is ideal for someone who:

• Enjoys hands‑on backend engineering.

• Likes solving backend, data, infrastructure, and integration problems.

• Cares about reliability, performance, security, and operational quality.

• Enjoys contributing to product decisions rather than only implementing tickets.

• Is comfortable working across engineering, product, design, and business teams.

• Likes variety, from feature development to support and platform improvement.

• Can make pragmatic decisions within evolving systems.

• Is comfortable taking responsibility for their work in production.

• Enjoys seeing their work support players, retailers, tournament organisers, partners, and internal teams.

This role is less suited to:

• Engineers who only want to work within a narrowly defined service or technology.

• Developers who prefer tightly prescribed tasks with minimal ambiguity.

• Engineers who do not want responsibility for production systems.

• Specialists who are unwilling to work across APIs, databases, infrastructure, integrations, and delivery.

• Engineers who prioritise technical novelty over practical product outcomes.

Why You’ll Love Working Here

• You’ll contribute to meaningful product and technical decisions.

• You’ll help build systems that support a global trading card game and competitive play ecosystem.

• You’ll work on products used by players, retailers, tournament organisers, partners, and internal teams around the world.

• You’ll have ownership of your work from implementation through to production.

• We move quickly, stay flexible, and avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.

• You’ll work with a collaborative team that values practical delivery and engineering quality.

• You’ll solve technical problems with visible real‑world impact.

• There is genuine opportunity to contribute to how our platform and engineering practices evolve.