Senior Backend Engineer - Video

About us

We are building a virtual universe which fundamentally improves how people interact online.

Today, that means a powerful remote-social platform. We already have people working out of our office spaces, attending our virtual conferences, or going to school on our campus spaces. We have folks hosting everything from magic conventions to artist EP launches to thanksgiving dinners, and even a few weddings.

The mission of Gather is to remove physical constraints on peoples' lives, and provide a virtual world which surpasses the real one in interconnectedness, personal touch, and expressiveness.

Role Overview:

As a Senior Backend Engineer on the Video team, you will have a chance to design simple yet expressive game engines, a flexible and reliable video system, and enable virtual space stations for every team.

Backend Engineers at Gather design and implement the complex systems that underlie what is simultaneously a live video chat platform, multiplayer game, and modern web app. The thoughtful design of the foundation that everything is built upon is essential to support the current feature set and usage of Gather and allow for rapid experimentation with future directions and scale to the next million Gather users.

Where you will make an impact:

• Performance tune the game service to support thousands of users per space
• Build (and secure) a web socket API which enables anyone to enhance Gather with their own arbitrary game logic
• Expand the expressiveness of objects and build the first few examples (think levers which cause [anything], projectiles, sounds, etc)
• Improve the reliability, scalability and performance of the video system through better architecture, testing, and monitoring
• Optimize our video servers to deliver media to hundreds or thousands of users per server
• Hook up a live-streaming service to deliver Gather video far beyond the Gather space where it originates
• Create ingestion tools to let users bring in video from anywhere on the Web
• Redesign our video backend to send media between servers, bringing video closer to the consumer.
• Rearchitect the game service to be stateless and massively parallelized
• Build a plugin system which allows anyone to use community-created add-ons

What you bring:

• Experience with distributed systems fundamentals
• Experience working with systems or infrastructure components at great scale
• Experience working with Typescript and NodeJS
• A keen intuition for well designed software and well written code
• Intrinsic motivation and the drive to solve difficult problems without guidance
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• A healthy tolerance for the chaotic balance between Doing Things Right and iterating and shipping quickly

Benefits

• Work remotely out of a state-of-the-art virtual office!
• Competitive compensation, benefits, and meaningful equity
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their dependents
• 401k and matching program
• Generous PTO policy and mental health days to recharge
• Meal stipend twice a week to keep you nourished
• Remote work, education, and health & wellness stipends
• Support for family planning & gender-affirmation
• The opportunity to join a passionate team in building something that actually makes peoples' lives better, every single day

Gather is committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace for individuals of all backgrounds. We strive to build a workplace where employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work, everyday. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, pregnancy or parental status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis prohibited by law. Additionally, we're committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please notify the recruiter you are working with. We also ask that all applicants consider answering the voluntary demographic questions on our job application to help us track the inclusivity of our recruiting efforts and programs. Answering these questions is entirely voluntary and your answers will not be shared with the hiring team and will not impact the hiring decision.