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

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 not only to support the current feature set and usage of Gather but also to allow for rapid experimentation with future directions and to scale to the next million Gather users.

Help us design a simple yet expressive game engine, a flexible and reliable video system, and enable virtual space stations for every team!

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 that 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
• Rearchitect the game service to be stateless and massively parallelized
• Build a plugin system that allows anyone to use community-created add-ons

What you bring:

• Experience with distributed systems fundamentals
• Experience working with systems or infrastructure components at a 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 stipend
• 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