Backend Engineer

Location: Remote (Preferably European time zones)

About the Company

Near Prime is looking for a Backend Engineer for one of your partner projects, who are redefining play with a one-of-a-kind cube-shaped gaming console that merges the physical and digital worlds. This Entertainment System combines modular hardware, immersive software, and creative game design to create a brand-new category of interactive entertainment. They are a fast-growing, innovative game development studio pushing the boundaries of interactive entertainment.

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Backend Engineer to build and scale the backend infrastructure powering the cube's ecosystem. You will be responsible for the server-side architecture behind our website, mobile applications, and connected gaming devices, ensuring secure, reliable, and high-performance communication across all platform components.

In this role, you will develop backend services that manage user accounts, the game catalog, purchases, and device connectivity, while designing scalable APIs and event-driven systems that support a growing ecosystem of players and hardware. You will collaborate closely with frontend, mobile, embedded, and DevOps engineers to deliver reliable backend solutions that bridge cloud services with physical devices.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend services using Node.js, TypeScript, and NestJS.
• Build and maintain RESTful APIs, including authentication, authorization, versioning, pagination, rate limiting, and security best practices.
• Design and implement microservice-based, event-driven architectures using gRPC, Protocol Buffers, and RabbitMQ.
• Develop backend systems supporting user management, game catalog, purchases, and cloud services for mobile and web applications.
• Build and maintain integrations between cloud services and WOWCube hardware, processing telemetry and device communication.
• Design and optimize MongoDB data models, queries, and overall database performance.
• Ensure backend services are secure, reliable, and scalable through proper testing, monitoring, and performance optimization.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including frontend, mobile, embedded, QA, and DevOps engineers, throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Participate in code reviews, write unit and integration tests, and contribute to improving engineering best practices.

• Support deployment, maintenance, and troubleshooting of services running in containerized and Kubernetes environments.

   

Requirements

• 5+ years of commercial backend development experience with Node.js and TypeScript.
• Strong experience building production applications with NestJS.
• Solid understanding of REST API design, including authentication, authorization, versioning, pagination, and rate limiting.
• Experience designing and maintaining microservice and event-driven architectures.
• Hands-on experience with gRPC, Protocol Buffers, and asynchronous messaging systems such as RabbitMQ.
• Strong knowledge of MongoDB and NoSQL database design.
• Good understanding of HTTP protocols (HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3) and network communication fundamentals.
• Experience with applied security concepts, including JWT, hashing, encryption, and digital signatures.
• Experience working with Docker, Git, code reviews, and automated unit/integration testing.
• Understanding of containerized deployments and Kubernetes concepts, including service discovery, configuration, and scaling behavior.

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently in a distributed engineering team.

   

Desirable Pluses

• Experience with MQTT or other communication protocols used for connected devices.
• Experience working with certificates, certificate lifecycle management, and secure device authentication.
• Experience with BLE, IoT platforms, or OTA (Over-the-Air) update systems.
• Experience with ClickHouse or other analytical databases.
• Familiarity with Vitest or Jest.
• Experience working with monorepo architectures.

• Previous experience building backend systems for connected devices, gaming platforms, or consumer hardware products.

   

What We Look for in Your Application

• An updated CV highlighting your backend technology stack and the production systems you have built or contributed to.
• Examples of scalable backend architectures, microservices, APIs, or distributed systems you have designed or maintained (GitHub or portfolio links are welcome where applicable).
• Experience working on products involving cloud services, mobile applications, connected devices, or IoT integrations is highly valued.