Software Engineer

At Argus Labs, we are shaping the future of video games through applied research in distributed systems and game design. We believe online game worlds should be open and interconnected, rather than closed siloes controlled by platform giants.

Argus is an MMO game developer and publisher built around a collective of hackers and designers in pursuit of the next great paradigm shift in the video game industry.

As an applied research lab with an integrated game studio/publisher, we are uniquely positioned to lead the way. We build our own games that are native to our infrastructure. This allows us to fully understand and utilize the capabilities of our platform, resulting in novel game designs built around the platform's unique power and quirks.

We recently raised $10 million in seed funding led by Haun Ventures with participation from angels in tech and gaming such as Elad Gil, Balaji Srinivasan, Kevin Aluwi, Siqi Chen, etc.

Read more about who we are at https://argus.gg

• We are looking for a skilled software engineer to join the World Engine team and help design, develop, and optimize our horizontally scalable open-source game server framework that utilizes a novel sharding architecture and EVM smart contracts to augment user-generated content.

• You will join a deeply technical engineering-focused team reporting directly to a technical CEO. You will have the opportunity to contribute significantly to the production direction and interface directly with World Engine's users through our open-source channels.

• Design, implement, and maintain highly scalable and reliable distributed systems that support real-time multiplayer gameplay.

• Optimize existing game server infrastructure for performance and cost efficiency.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including game developers, network engineers, and cloud architects, to integrate server-side logic with game functionalities.

• Implement robust synchronization mechanisms to handle high-latency and partial failure scenarios effectively.

• Develop tools and frameworks to automate server infrastructure deployment, scaling, and monitoring.

• Conduct load testing and performance tuning to ensure system stability and respond to customer-facing latency issues.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or relevant technical field; OR significant relevant past software engineering project/working experience.

• Strong experience designing and building distributed systems, preferably with exposure to online gaming or real-time interactive systems.

• Proficiency in object-oriented programming languages such as C++, Rust, or Go.

• Deep understanding of network protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, WebSocket) and low-level networking.

• Familiarity with database management and caching solutions (Redis, MongoDB, SQL).

• Ability to diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks in high-traffic environments.

• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to think algorithmically.

• Experience with cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and server orchestration technologies (Kubernetes, Docker).

• Experience with blockchain technology.

• Experience with game development (Unity, Unreal, etc).

• Past significant contributions to open-source projects.

• Notable demonstration of software engineering or technical capabilities such as:

  • Highly technical personal projects (compilers/interpreters, P2P, byzantine fault-tolerant distributed system, cryptography, etc.)

  • Competitive programming competitions (IOI, ICPC, USACO, Google Code Jam, Codeforces, etc.)

  • Capture-The-Flag/CTF competitions (DEFCON, PicoCTF, etc.)

For full-time employees

• A note for the game industry veterans: no crunch :-)

• Flexible PTO (2 weeks required) + holidays

• 100% employer-covered medical, dental, and vision insurance (US)

• 401k (US)

• Up to $1500 desk set-up stipend

• Company retreats

We’re an equal-opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran, or disability status.