Lead Full-Stack Developer
Location: Remote-first
Type: Full-time
Start: ASAP
About Couch Heroes
At Couch Heroes, we’re exploring new ground for the MMO genre. In a world where fantasy and ancient technology intertwine, players explore shattered realms, grapple across verticality, solve puzzles, and push back corruption, with progression driven by player expression and discovery. We envision bridging generations of gamers, creating a space where both coexist and journey together. We’re developing in Unreal Engine, in early production, with a team spanning multiple countries.
We’re remote-first, based in the UK, and scaling to support a multi-year live-service roadmap. We value autonomy, curiosity, and collaborative ownership, and we’re looking for creators who want to help build something from the ground up. Sound like your kind of thing? We should talk.
About the Job
The web and platform layer of an MMO is what players interact with outside the game client: account systems, social features, community tools, content delivery, and the services that tie the live experience together. We need a Lead Full-Stack Developer who can own the architecture of these systems and build the engineering team that delivers them.
You will report to the CTO and manage a growing team of web and platform engineers. You will make architectural decisions, stay hands-on with code, and represent the web engineering discipline across the studio in production planning and resourcing decisions.
We are in early production. The studio has been running for three years, and core platform infrastructure is being built alongside the game itself. You will be making foundational choices about stack architecture, service boundaries, deployment pipelines, and data models that the team builds on for years to come. This is not a maintenance role. You are building systems from the ground up.
Your Role
People Leadership and Team Development
- Manage a growing team of engineers as the team scales through production: set priorities, assign work, balance workload, and run regular 1:1s focused on progress, career development, and honest feedback.
- Lead performance reviews and goal setting aligned to production milestones and individual development plans. Identify skill gaps and address them through coaching, stretch assignments, or training.
- Represent the web engineering discipline in cross-discipline leads meetings, production planning, and resourcing conversations. Advocate for team needs and capacity.
- Foster a team culture of code quality, shared ownership, and continuous improvement.
- Support hiring as the team grows: contribute to job descriptions, review technical submissions, and participate in interview loops.
Technical Leadership and Architecture
- Architect and lead the development of backend microservices using TypeScript, Node.js, and Express, with MongoDB for persistent storage and Redis for caching, session management, and pub/sub messaging.
- Design scalable, well-bounded services that support the throughput and reliability demands of a live-service MMO: player accounts, social systems, marketplace, mail, inventory, and platform integrations.
- Own CI/CD pipelines using Azure Pipelines, with Docker and Kubernetes on Azure for container orchestration and deployment. Establish deployment practices that support rapid iteration without compromising stability.
- Make architectural decisions about service boundaries, data models, caching strategies, and API design that balance immediate delivery needs with long-term scalability.
- Establish monitoring, alerting, and incident response practices using Grafana and Uptime Kuma or equivalent observability tools.
Frontend Engineering
- Build polished, responsive, and accessible interfaces using TypeScript, React, and Next.js, with Redux for state management and Zod for schema validation.
- Collaborate with UI/UX design to ensure clean design-to-implementation handoff and user-centric workflows across platform features.
- Ensure frontend systems are built for internationalisation, accessibility, and performance from the start.
Platform Integration
- Work with gameplay engineering and online services to define how web platform systems integrate with the game client: authentication, account management, social features, content delivery, and analytics.
- Collaborate with production to manage scope, schedules, and task breakdowns for web engineering work. Contribute to milestone planning, sprint scoping, and capacity forecasting.
Must-Haves
- Proven experience in software development, with at least one shipped product or live service.
- Proven experience in a senior or lead role with hands-on team leadership experience: running 1:1s, setting goals, conducting reviews, and developing team members.
- Strong backend experience with TypeScript, Node.js, and Express for API development.
- Production experience with MongoDB and Redis in a services environment.
- Strong frontend experience with React and Next.js.
- Working knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipeline design.
- Experience with Azure Cloud services or equivalent cloud platform.
- Strong communication skills and a collaborative working style, with proven experience making architectural decisions in cross-functional teams.
Nice-to-Haves
- Experience building backend services for games, social platforms, or real-time multiplayer applications.
- Experience with Redux, Zod, or equivalent state management and validation libraries.
- Familiarity with real-time communication systems: WebSocket at scale, pub/sub architectures, or event-driven service design.
- Experience with Grafana, Uptime Kuma, or equivalent observability and monitoring tools.
- Experience with OAuth2/JWT authentication flows and identity management.
- Experience with Golang or additional backend languages.
- Contributions to open-source projects or technical writing that demonstrates systems thinking.
About You
- You lead by example. You are hands-on when needed and empowering always.
- You build systems that last and take pride in readable, maintainable code.
- You are comfortable translating product vision into technical decisions and explaining technical constraints to non-technical stakeholders.
- You are comfortable working through ambiguity. Early production means not everything is defined yet, and you see that as an opportunity to shape the right architecture.
- You balance engineering ideals with delivery pragmatism. You know when to build for the future and when to ship what works.
- You work autonomously in a remote environment, proactively keeping your team aligned and your stakeholders informed.
- We are committed to making our hiring process accessible. If you require reasonable adjustments at any stage, please let us know.
Couch Heroes have partnered with Skillsearch on this hire. Jack is leading the search directly with the studio leadership, so feel free to reach out to him at jb@skillsearch.com. He will be your point of contact throughout. Looking forward to connecting!
Equal Opportunities
Couch Heroes is an equal opportunities employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender identity or expression, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic.
Privacy and data
We process your personal data as part of the recruitment process. Couch Heroes and Skillsearch both act as data controllers in relation to your application. For details on how your information is collected, used, stored, and your rights under UK GDPR, please review the relevant Privacy Policies below:
Couch Heroes: https://couch-heroes.com/privacy-policy/
Skillsearch: https://www.skillsearch.com/privacy#policy