Lead Software Engineer

Position Summary

We’re hiring a Lead Software Engineer for Gold Fish Casino Slots. It’s a nine‑figure‑revenue PHP codebase that has shipped continuously for over a decade. The codebase has a long history of overlapping initiatives, partial migrations, and legacy code that needs love. Your job will be to make this codebase substantially better, not keep it from getting worse.

You’ll work with engineering leadership on roadmaps and trade‑offs. You set technical standards by example, mentor mid‑level engineers through complex work, and write code. This is a hands‑on role, not a planning role. Beyond the game server, you’ll also influence our admin tooling stack—a PHP backend with jQuery and Vue.js on the front end— which has its own rough edges and room for improvement.

• You use AI as a power tool, not a teammate. It helps with repetitive work, drafting, and learning—but the engineering judgment stays with you.
• You’re an excellent communicator, surfacing trade‑offs and risks early with evidence.
• Your design docs and PR descriptions are clear enough that engineers can act on them without a meeting.
• Your code reviews make the team better, and you know when to raise issues.

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time as a senior or lead engineer on a production system.
• Deep PHP skills, including Composer, dependency injection containers (Symfony DI or equivalent), and static analysis.
• Ability to set priority at two levels: technical execution order, and personal scope.
• Experience writing production‑ready code that considers load, failure modes, and night‑time stability.
• Judgment about testing: when to ship a unit test, invest in heavier verification, or ship behind a flag.
• Technical leadership and mentoring experience: your code and reviews set the standard for the team.

• Relentlessly curious—figuring out why a bug exists and how the system would look without it.
• Critical thinker—challenging patterns and pressure‑testing the first answer.
• Design‑savvy—holding competing patterns in mind and deciding when to converge or leave them alone.
• Team multiplier—improving teammates through code review, design conversations, and pairing, not just by writing the hard parts.
• Product‑minded—understanding that code directly affects real players, so behavior‑preserving refactors matter.

• Large‑scale architectural refactors on legacy PHP.
• Production experience with modern observability stacks (metrics, tracing, profiling, structured logs).
• Live‑service games industry or another high‑throughput, revenue‑critical consumer service.
• Experience with Vue.js or jQuery.
• AWS or similar cloud technology.

• Competitive salary.
• Annual bonuses, matching 401(k).
• Open office concept with ergonomic seating and standing desks.
• Game room featuring current‑generation consoles, multiple game titles, and table games.
• Fully stocked kitchen with beverages and snacks, and company‑paid lunches twice a week.
• Paid family leave.
• Paid volunteer time.
• Annual two‑night company retreat.

Sci Play is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against applicants due to race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, or other protected classes. For more information about your equal employment opportunity rights under the law, please .