Staff Level / Lead JavaScript Engineer (NodeJS / NestJS / TypeScript) | VR Shooting Simulator | Remote (US-based) | $160,000 USD - $225,000 USD + Bonus

The Company

They’re redefining how people train with firearms, bringing the range experience right into the home through immersive VR. By combining realistic handgun replicas with interactive digital environments, they help users sharpen skills, build confidence, and train consistently without stepping outside. It’s about accessibility, repetition, and readiness, making high-quality practice possible anytime, so every day can feel like a day at the range. The platform sits at the heart of a complex, high-traffic ecosystem, one that relies on resilient APIs, well-structured data systems, and thoughtful engineering decisions. With customers in over 70 countries worldwide, their environment values clean architecture, reliability, and engineers who care deeply about how systems behave in the real world.

The Role

They are looking for a Staff-level JavaScript engineer to step into a Squad Lead position and take ownership of a critical backend migration. This role blends deep hands-on engineering with technical leadership. The successful candidate will remain an individual contributor, writing production code daily, while also guiding architectural direction, mentoring engineers, and setting the bar for delivery and quality across their squad. This role sits at the intersection of execution and influence, leading by example, not by abstraction. The successful candidate will be located within the US, ideally in a CT time-zone, although, they are more focused on finding the right candidate, rather than the right location.

The Responsibilities

• Lead a small engineering squad, supporting sprint execution, technical decision-making, and code quality
• Design, evolve, and maintain scalable backend services using NodeJS, NestJS, TypeScript, and PostgreSQL
• Own architectural outcomes for APIs, integrations, and data flows across distributed systems
• Improve system reliability, performance, and scalability through thoughtful database design, caching strategies, and service optimization
• Establish and uphold engineering best practices around testing, observability, logging, and security
• Partner closely with DevOps tooling and cloud infrastructure, including CI/CD workflows and AWS-based services
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, pairing, and architectural guidance
• Collaborate with product, QA, and leadership to translate business needs into durable technical solutions
• Act as a cultural multiplier, reinforcing high standards, pragmatic decision-making, and clean system design

The Requirements

• Strong preference for prior experience in gaming (AAA or Indie), VR or simulators.
• Prior experience leading a small team of engineers.
• Exposure to smaller organisations/the start-up environment will be highly regarded.
• Extensive backend engineering experience, with deep hands-on expertise in NodeJS and NestJS
• Strong command of TypeScript and comfort working across API layers and adjacent frontend codebases when needed
• Proven experience designing and operating relational databases, with PostgreSQL strongly preferred
• Solid understanding of caching technologies such as Redis or managed equivalents
• Demonstrated experience leading small teams or owning large technical initiatives
• Strong background in API design, including versioning and backward compatibility
• Practical AWS experience across compute, storage, and database services
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools and cloud-native deployment patterns
• Deep understanding of the software development lifecycle, including CI/CD, production support, and rollback strategies
• Clear, confident communicator who balances autonomy with collaboration

Nice to Have

• Experience with event-driven systems or message queues
• Exposure to observability, metrics, or distributed tracing platforms
• Background working in both early-stage and scaled product environments

Why Apply

This is an opportunity for an experienced engineer who still loves to build, but wants their technical judgment to matter. They’ll be trusted with meaningful ownership, real architectural influence, and the chance to leave systems better than they found them. If leading through code, mentoring others, and shaping reliable backend platforms sounds like the right challenge, let’s start the conversation.