Principal Software Engineer; backend

Austin, TX;
Toronto, Canada

Level Up Your Career with Zynga!

At Zynga, we bring people together through the power of play. As a global leader in interactive entertainment and a proud label of Take‑Two Interactive, our games have been downloaded over 6 billion times—connecting players in 175+ countries through fun, strategy, and a little friendly competition.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in California, our teams span North America, Europe, and Asia, working together to craft unforgettable gaming experiences. Whether you’re spinning, strategizing, matching, or competing, Zynga is where fun meets innovation—and where you can take your career to the next level.

Join us and be part of the play!

Come join the team at Zynga making an impact across all of the company’s games - Central Technology! We focus on shared client & server tech that drives the core gameplay experience under the hood. We’re looking for outstanding engineers with a passion for technology and the desire to work in a team with dynamic strengths. The Principal Software Engineer will be working with a complementary team of software engineers to craft and maintain Zynga’s core Payments platform, which enables flawless integration with app stores, consoles, and payments processing providers.

They will play a key role in helping architect, build and improve the next‑gen framework for our games.

• Design and architect new backend applications/services running in AWS
• Optimize and refactor existing services to improve reliability, scalability and to lower cost
• Document and build plans for architecture and system designs
• Take a hands‑on approach in architecting, writing and reviewing code
• Review detailed tech plans from others, aligning with the team and Zynga‑wide technical vision
• Proactively identify and recommend improvements to address systemic problems and tech debt
• Follow engineering standard methodologies to ensure code quality, performance and reliability
• Work collaboratively across teams to understand product/customer requirements and propose technical solutions
• Provide production and integration support for shared technology across Zynga games

• Degree in a technical field (e.g., Computer Science, Computer Engineering) or equivalent experience
• 6+ years of hands‑on software development experience
• Experience in programming RESTful services