Senior Backend Engineer

We build and scale:

• VRC+ subscription infrastructure
• Central and avatar marketplaces
• First-party and creator-driven digital content systems
• Digital credits, wallets, inventory, ownership, and subscription models
• Creator payouts and reconciliation
• Monetization events and purchase flows
• Economic analytics and reporting
• Internal and external tooling supporting creators and platform teams

What You'll Do:

• Design and implement scalable backend services in Node.js and TypeScript
• Ensure transactional integrity in high-volume economic systems
• Model digital ownership, entitlements, wallets, and payouts
• Build and evolve systems supporting both first-party and creator-driven content
• Drive refactors that improve maintainability and long-term platform evolution
• Participate in architectural discussions shaping the future of VRChat’s economy stack
• Design reliable economic event representations
• Ensure traceability across payment transactions and reporting systems
• Enable subscription and marketplace analytics
• Support experimentation and feature iteration
• Maintain reconciliation accuracy and reporting integrity
• Contribute to fraud detection and prevention systems
• Own services from development through deployment and monitoring
• Improve CI/CD reliability and release safety
• Work within containerized environments (Docker)
• Contribute to Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Strengthen observability, monitoring, and incident response practices
• Occasionally jump in to resolve critical production issues
 

Senior-Level Expectations

• Design and implement scalable backend services
• Own systems end-to-end through production
• Improve performance, observability, and operational resilience
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Design, Data, Finance, Trust & Safety, Infrastructure, and peer engineering teams
• Lead architectural initiatives across the economy stack
• Shape long-term technical direction
• Identify systemic risks and drive preventative improvements
• Mentor engineers and elevate engineering standards
• Influence and inform cross-team design decisions

Staff-Level Expectations (In Addition)

• Bring credible experience designing and operating financial or high-integrity transactional systems at scale
• Architect cross-team economic platform primitives (e.g., entitlement models, payment flows, reconciliation frameworks, event contracts)
• Define long-term technical strategy for the economy stack, balancing scalability, compliance, and product velocity
• Lead strategic architecture initiatives spanning multiple services or teams, and high stake external partners and integrations
• Mentor senior engineers and influence technical direction across the organization
• Influence cross-team design decisions at platform scale

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in backend engineering for SaaS, fintech, marketplaces, or online platforms
• Deep proficiency in Node.js and TypeScript
• Strong experience with relational and non-relational databases (MySQL, MongoDB, Redis)
• Experience managing message queues, caching strategies, and WebSocket systems
• Proven experience building and maintaining external integrations (payment vendors, fintech platforms)
• Strong understanding of profiling, optimization tradeoffs, and observability
• Experience operating under PCI DSS, GDPR, and PII requirements
• Experience building subscription engines, marketplaces, accounting systems, or invoicing workflows
• Familiarity with AWS, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity across experimental and high-certainty requirements
• Experience working in complex, evolving codebases

Bonus Points

• Experience with event-driven or high-throughput transactional systems
• Experience integrating with Steam, Oculus, Apple, or Google Play payment systems
• Experience leading large-scale refactors or architectural migrations
• Experience building internal operational tooling or creator-facing systems
• Full-stack development experience
• Active participation in creator economies or VRChat itself

Team Fit & Mindset

• Independent and proactive self-starter
• Low ego, high ownership, and collaborative
• Growth-oriented and adaptable
• Empathetic toward creators and end users
• Calm and clear-headed during high-traffic events or critical incidents

Benefits

• Work from anywhere — VRChat is a 100% remote company
• Flexible working hours with core collaboration overlap
• Health benefits
• 401(k) for US employees & Group RRSP for Canadian employees
• Stock options
• Generous paid holiday schedule
• Unlimited/flexible vacation time
• Paid parental leave