Principal Node.js Engineer

About the Company

Twin Harbour Interactive builds strategy games with a focus on quality, global accessibility, and long-term player engagement. The company works with a multicultural, international team and keeps a flat structure with open communication and a strong emphasis on independent work. Innovation is central to how the team operates, including the use of AI to reduce repetitive tasks and make room for deeper strategic thinking and human connection.

The organization is a global strategy game studio with offices in Hamburg and Malta, serving players across borders and generations.

Role Overview

As a Principal Node.js Engineer on the platform team, you will shape and strengthen backend systems that need to be stable, fast, scalable, secure, and easy to maintain. The role involves technical leadership, coordination with product and engineering stakeholders, and close partnership with the product manager to set priorities and guide long-term technical direction.

Key Responsibilities

You will help evolve the core backend from a PHP monolith into a secure, decoupled service-based architecture. The position also calls for driving architectural choices, improving development standards, and guiding the team toward stronger engineering practices.

Technical Scope

Work includes building with TypeScript and NestJS, contributing to service design, and working across tools and platforms such as Sentry, Datadog, Sonar, Docker, Kubernetes, MySQL, Postgres, Redis, Memcache, and Pub/Sub. You will also support API integrations, payment flows, and data tracking systems.

Leadership and Collaboration

In this role you will mentor developers, help shape technical decisions, coordinate with quality engineers, and collaborate closely with the Head of Platform. You will also take responsibility for important technical KPIs and lead technical discussions when alignment is not reached across the team.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate brings deep Node.js and TypeScript expertise, strong architectural thinking, and the ability to understand legacy PHP systems while modernizing them. You should be comfortable with testing practices, relational databases, containers, cloud environments, and high-load distributed applications.

The company values people who are curious about AI-assisted development, can translate business needs into technical requirements, and are comfortable working in agile Kanban environments. A passion for games, experience in interdisciplinary teams, and interest in broadening into full-stack work are all welcome.

Benefits and Culture

The team offers a collaborative, human-first culture with room to grow through mentoring, career path support, language learning, e-learning, and conference or training assistance. Social connection is also part of the workplace, with activities such as game nights, drinks, quiz nights, and karaoke.

Flexible work setups are supported, including hybrid working from Hamburg or Malta, depending on role and location.

Additional Information

The company strongly values diversity, autonomy, and efficient work. Over 30 nationalities are represented across its locations, and employees are encouraged to contribute to both the success of the games and the long-term vision of the platform.

Role Mission

• Lead the shift from a monolithic PHP backend to a safer, faster, and more modular service architecture.
• Own architectural decisions for new backend services.
• Embed security, testing, and engineering best practices into day-to-day development.
• Write maintainable, high-quality TypeScript code with NestJS.
• Work with monitoring, observability, container, database, and messaging tools across the stack.
• Drive key technical metrics that support smooth delivery and development performance.
• Partner with the Head of Platform on technical direction and roadmap planning.
• Work closely with quality engineers to make testing and QA part of the development process.
• Lead integration work for APIs, payment providers, and tracking systems.
• Coach and support developers on the team.
• Facilitate technical discussions and make decisions when agreement cannot be reached within the team.

Candidate Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience developing with TypeScript and Node.js.
• Strong background in service architecture approaches such as DDD, plus working knowledge of PHP 7/8 and PHP frameworks for navigating legacy codebases.
• Hands-on experience with unit, integration, and end-to-end testing, as well as modern Node.js frameworks.
• Solid understanding of relational databases and container-based environments.
• Experience with multi-server, high-traffic Node.js systems and APIs, along with cloud technologies such as GCP.
• Ability to write clear, structured, maintainable code and apply design patterns thoughtfully.
• Comfort working through complex codebases quickly.
• Interest in AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini.
• Ability to turn business needs into technical requirements.
• Proven coaching and mentoring capability, with skill in facilitating technical conversations across teams.
• Experience with agile methods, especially Kanban.
• Strong interest in games and enjoyment of interdisciplinary teamwork; prior game development experience is an advantage.
• Fluency in technical and business English.
• Willingness to learn beyond the core role and take on some full-stack development tasks.

Work Environment

The company promotes autonomy, open communication, and efficient collaboration in agile teams. It also emphasizes innovation through practical AI adoption and a shared passion for strategy games.