Innersloth is a small team scattered mostly in North America. We released Among Us in 2018 and its popularity and ongoing development updates means we need help wrangling our growing backend team! We’re looking for someone to help oversee and directly manage our backend team's programmers. Your hard work will affect millions of players around the world (and help our Principal Backend Programmer take a nap).

Your focus will be on managing our backend programmers - making sure they're happy, have balanced work loads, and are on track with performance and long term goals.

You’ll work with our Principal Backend Programmer and Senior Technical Producer under the guidance of our CEO to run the backend team at Innersloth. Your portion of that responsibility will be to work 1:1 with each of our Backend Programmers to support their experience at Innersloth. You will help manage our backend contract workers to a lesser extent. We don’t want to overscope this, but because we are a small team, sometimes responsibilities overlap - a willingness to learn and help is essential. While your work load will focus on people management, we expect you to perform technical tasks as bandwidth allows. We believe that having a close understanding of the type of work the team is doing will equip you to help manage the team's experience. You will not be working alone, and our team prioritizes providing support and ensuring you are thriving in your role.

We especially encourage marginalized groups and people from underrepresented backgrounds, genders, and locations to apply. Diverse voices make Innersloth better, and we strive to continue creating a diverse and welcoming space from the ground up.

Please note this is not an entry-level position, but we'll consider strong candidates with general experience managing a technical team or a background in any kind of network programming that accounts for the required skillset, even without 5+ years of "official" experience matching the expectations set below. Please absolutely include these things in your application!

What we're looking for

Proactivity, independence, and accountability are extremely important for this position. If you show an aptitude for working well with others, handling conflict, and understanding backend technology, we want to hear from you!

The following points outline the experience and skills that we strongly prefer. None of these are strict dealbreakers, but reflect the type of experience we feel would lead to finding the right candidate for this position.

Our expectations:

• Excellent knowledge in one or more of the following: C#, Go, Kubernetes, Docker.
• Extensive experience working in backend development including:
  • 5+ years experience working in backend, devops, multiplayer, or equivalent.
  • 2+ years experience in a managerial position.
  • Experience with source control.
• Experience and comfort diving into an existing codebase.
• Strong bug investigation skills.
• Demonstrate technical skills that qualify the ability to evaluate the performance of programmers on your team.
• You are a highly organized, self-sufficient person with an extremely high attention to detail.
• Can collaborate within a team and with other teams to build and iterate on cross-disciplinary features.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills and the ability to clearly articulate and document your code, ideas, and suggestions.
• Experience following and inter-department processes.
• A learning mindset and the ability to analyze and give feedback to improve our processes.
• Proven experience managing a team of programmers with performance management and goal setting structures.
• Excellent people skills and a kind approach to working with others.
• A desire to create a positive work experience for your team members.
• Ability to work with a team, provide and receive feedback, and clearly and empathetically communicate.
• Ability to work somewhat flexibly and independently across multiple project spaces.

Nice to have:

• Experience working in games, particularly live service games.
• Experience creating maintainable systems and architectures.
• Familiarity with databases, message queues, and web development.
• Familiarity with network security.
• Familiarity with highly scalable systems.
• Familiarity with low level network protocols.
• Click Up certifications.
• Familiarity with the Among Us IP.
• Education related to the role is an asset but not required.

What you'll be doing

• Work with the Principal Backend Programmer and Senior Tech Producer to reach the goals and push the direction of the backend forward.
• Run regular meetings with each Backend Programmer to manage work load, evaluate and guide performance and growth, make sure they're taking enough vacation, and help ensure people have a safe space to discuss issues and maintain a happy work life experience with Innersloth.
• Help evaluate the performance of external backend contract workers.
• Maintain and update support and call schedules for Backend Programmers.
• Help with hiring, on-boarding, backend team software access.
• Assist distribution of work amongst Backend Programmers, keeping team members unblocked, and help prevent knowledge silo-ing when practical and helping Backend Programmers gain experience aligned with their interest, as scheduling allows.
• Provide feedback to the Principal Backend Programmer and Senior Tech Producer on the team's work load and capability to reach goals at a healthy work pace.
• Collaborate on setting code quality standards and, reviewing code, and evaluating if those standards are being met.
• As work load and skill set allows, contribute to the backend's code base or infrastructure.
• Share feedback with relevant parties in the interest of improving processes, maintaining a solid technical direction, and making Innersloth a great place to work.
• When needed, act as a liaison between the backend team and other departments and upper management for review or cross-team initiatives related to the above responsibilities.

Our offer

• Full time job from the comfort of your home (as long as you are willing to work in our core 10am - 2pm PT hours, and being close-ish to us is a bonus).
• We are comfortable working with local HR companies or creating subsidiaries over time to better support staff in other countries.
• A competitive salary.
• Benefits (or in-kind), appropriate for the role. Health, retirement, vacations, etc.
• A guarantee that your job is safe and stable for a few years - regardless of what's happening around us, we have a very healthy financial runway.
• A small collection of friendly, diverse workmates and partner companies.

FAQ

• What's the level of experience necessary?
  • There’s no real hard requirement (5 years is suggested), but ideally we’d have someone who is experienced in management who is able to understand backend development, work effectively with people, and has a good head on their shoulders.
• Do I have to do everything by myself?
  • No!!! You'll be working extremely closely with Mik (Principal Backend Programmer) and Jona (Senior Technical Producer) to manage various aspects of the backend team, which consists of Brad, Luna, and Nick along with various external contractors. So while you won’t be expected to wrangle the entire backend team's needs, you’ll be taking ownership of a lot of the work involved with the individual members of the backend team and their well-being so the team can operate effectively and efficiently while maintaining work life balance and personal interests. 
• What’s the backend team like?
  • The backend team supports a wide range of "network programming" topics at Innersloth across multiplayer netcode, matchmaking, account services, notifications, devops, data storage, and telemetry. We manage the upkeep of the worldwide Among Us backend and help support future projects where needed. We have a highly collaborative team that likes to group discuss technical choices and help unblock each other.

Recruitment Process

Applications close at the end of September 4th, 2024.

• You'll get an email from us to acknowledge receipt.
• We’ll review applications and contact everyone to let you know if you made it to the next stage or not. Due to the sheer volume of responses we got last time, it's likely you won't hear from us until mid to late September.
• Stage 2 will be a video call with 2-3 people from the team to get context on your technical experience, the depth of your technical skillset, and what you could bring to the company. There will be time for you to ask question as well.
• Stage 3 will be another video call with some of the wider team members you may work with at Innersloth. Here we will learn more about your non-technical experience and approach as a manager. There will be time for you to ask question as well.
• If all goes well you'll get a job offer.

Wow, you made it to the end!

Please press the button and send us your application. We look forward to hearing from you!