.NET - Principal Backend Engineer - Full Remote Portugal

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY

Join a leading technology-driven gaming company as a Principal Backend Engineer and become a key technical leader shaping the future of high-performance, scalable backend systems. This position offers the rare opportunity to work on cutting-edge distributed systems at massive scale while enjoying 100% remote work from anywhere in Portugal.

We're building a powerhouse team of technical leaders who will architect the backbone of a gaming platform serving millions of users globally. This isn't just a coding role - you'll be a technical mastermind and mentor, collaborating with cross-functional teams to design robust software solutions, establishing company-wide best practices, and defining the strategic technical roadmap unencumbered by short-term product pressures.

This is an opportunity for experienced tech leaders who thrive on both deep technical work and people development. You'll work autonomously on highly complex challenges, mentor engineers across all levels, drive performance optimization initiatives, and stay at the forefront of emerging technologies. The role offers clear career paths with a developmental 360° feedback framework, ensuring your continuous growth alongside the engineers you'll inspire.

PROJECT & CONTEXT

You'll be architecting and implementing scalable, secure, and high-performance backend systems that power a global gaming platform processing millions of transactions and user interactions daily. Working within an agile, cross-functional environment, you'll collaborate seamlessly with product teams, stakeholders, and fellow engineers to design distributed systems and microservice architectures that deliver seamless user experiences at scale.

Your responsibilities span the entire technical leadership spectrum - from crafting clean, efficient code that drives the core technology stack to mentoring fellow tech leaders and establishing engineering excellence across the organization. You'll lead the charge on performance optimization, identifying bottlenecks and enhancing system efficiency to ensure world-class reliability and speed.

A critical aspect of this role is strategic technical vision - you'll work closely with Principal Engineers to define the company-wide technical roadmap, setting architectural standards and laying foundations for new software development. This strategic work focuses on long-term technical excellence rather than being constrained by immediate product deadlines, allowing you to make architectural decisions that will scale the platform for years to come.

The technical environment emphasizes modern distributed systems built on the .NET platform with event-driven architectures using message brokers like Kafka or RabbitMQ. You'll be deeply involved in DevOps practices, containerization, monitoring, and observability, making data-driven decisions to troubleshoot production systems and ensure exceptional uptime and performance.

Core Tech Stack: .NET (C#), Kafka/RabbitMQ, Microservices Architecture
DevOps & Infrastructure: Containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), CI/CD, Monitoring & Observability
Work Environment: Agile methodologies, distributed teams, full remote flexibility
Impact: Millions of users globally, high-scale distributed systems, real-time processing

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR (Required)

• Education: Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field
• .NET Platform Mastery: Deep knowledge of the Microsoft .NET platform and its ecosystem (or strong willingness to learn if coming from other enterprise platforms)
• Polyglot Experience: Proven track record working professionally with multiple programming languages and paradigms (C#, Java, Go, Python, etc.)
• Distributed Systems Expertise: Extensive experience designing, implementing, and scaling performant distributed systems and microservice architectures
• Message Broker Experience: Hands-on experience with message brokers like Kafka or RabbitMQ and deep understanding of messaging patterns (pub/sub, event sourcing, CQRS)
• DevOps & Containers: Strong experience with DevOps practices and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, container orchestration)
• Autonomous Leadership: Proven ability to work autonomously on highly complex tasks while considering multiple dimensions - performance, security, observability, and code quality
• Production Ownership: Genuine passion for monitoring and troubleshooting production systems with track record of making data-driven operational decisions
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Excellent communication and collaboration skills targeting diverse audiences - from business stakeholders to cross-functional technical teams
• Technical Guidance: Ability to provide clear technical guidance and insight across different organizational levels
• Mentorship Capability: Experience and passion for mentoring engineers of all levels, fostering skill growth and promoting best practices
• Performance Optimization: Track record of identifying performance bottlenecks and leading optimization initiatives for large-scale systems
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to balance tactical execution with strategic technical vision and long-term architectural planning
• Language: Exceptional fluency in English (B2+ minimum) for daily communication, documentation, and technical presentations
• Location: Based in Portugal with availability for full remote work

NICE TO HAVE (Preferred)

• Advanced .NET: Deep expertise with modern .NET Core/.NET 6/7/8 and advanced C# features (async/await patterns, performance optimization, memory management)
• Cloud-Native Architectures: Experience designing cloud-native applications on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform
• Event-Driven Architecture: Advanced understanding of event sourcing, CQRS, saga patterns, and eventual consistency models
• Advanced Kafka: Deep Kafka expertise including Kafka Streams, Connect, Schema Registry, and high-throughput optimization
• Multiple Message Brokers: Experience with various message brokers beyond Kafka (RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, AWS SQS/SNS, NATS)
• Observability Stack: Hands-on experience with comprehensive observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry)
• High-Availability Systems: Experience designing and operating systems with strict SLA requirements (99.99%+ uptime)
• Database Expertise: Experience with both SQL (PostgreSQL, SQL Server) and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra) at scale
• API Design Excellence: Strong track record designing RESTful and/or gRPC APIs with versioning, documentation, and governance
• Service Mesh: Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) for microservices communication
• Testing Strategies: Expertise in comprehensive testing approaches - unit, integration, contract testing, chaos engineering
• CI/CD Mastery: Advanced knowledge of CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions)
• Infrastructure as Code: Experience with Terraform, Pulumi, or ARM/CloudFormation for infrastructure automation
• Security Best Practices: Deep understanding of application security, authentication/authorization patterns (OAuth, OIDC), and secure coding
• Gaming Industry: Previous experience in gaming, betting, real-time systems, or high-transaction environments
• Team Leadership: Formal or informal technical leadership experience - leading architecture guilds, technical working groups, or engineering teams
• Open Source Contributions: Active participation in open-source projects or developer community contributions
• Technical Writing: Strong technical writing and documentation skills for RFCs, ADRs (Architecture Decision Records), and system design docs
• Agile at Scale: Experience with scaled agile frameworks (SAFe, LeSS) or leading agile transformations
• Cost Optimization: Experience optimizing cloud infrastructure costs and resource efficiency
• Polyglot Persistence: Experience choosing and implementing appropriate database technologies for different use cases

Location: Portugal (100% Remote)