You make sure our game runs like a charm… and when it doesn’t, you’re the one who brings it back to life. As our Backend & Architecture Engineer, you keep things fast, safe, and simple. You’ll work closely with our Lead Developer, who lives by the motto “less is more”. Together, you’ll ensure our systems stay secure and scalable, and pleasant to work with for both our players and our engineers.

If you’ve ever dreamed of joining the games industry, this is your sign to saddle up and apply 🐎

Our player base keeps growing, and we want to make sure our backend is ready for that future. You’ll help us build a strong, clean foundation for years ahead.

• 🧩 Keep things simple: Strengthen our architecture and remove unnecessary bloat. Help us consolidate to using a few powerful tools well.
• ⚙️ Support our Lead Engineer: Make the backend more reliable, faster, and easier to maintain.
• 🔒 Improve performance and security: Make sure everything runs safely and smoothly.
• 🚨 Stay calm in chaos: When things go down, you lead the way to get them back up methodically, without panic.
• 🐛 Prevent problems before they happen: Logging, monitoring, dashboards → you make sure we can see trouble coming.
• 🧠 Build for people: Write maintainable, well-documented code that makes your future self (and your teammates) thank you.
• 🤝 Collaborate: Work closely with our Lead Engineer and share your knowledge with the rest of the team.
• 💻 Tech Stack: PHP, Laravel, Golang, MariaDB, MongoDB, Web Components, JavaScript, Redis, Docker, Git.

• You have good knowledge of either PHP/Laravel or Golang, and either relational or NoSQL databases
• You’re comfortable working with Git, Docker, and Linux.
• You think in systems — performance, security, maintainability, scalability — and believe testing beats luck.
• You value working collaboratively - bouncing ideas, communicating intentions, and developing a shared vision of the overall direction
• You know that concurrent-safe code doesn’t just happen, and design with that in mind.
• You would relish being given a bit more time to think through and write the shorter, more elegant solution.
• You can explain complex things simply (in clear English).
• You live somewhere in the EU and have the right to work here 🇪🇺 (this is a requirement, not a request).

• Know your way around some of the following: Jenkins, search databases, event driven architectures, time series databases
• Have experience with Sentry and/or Datadog
• Speak a bit of Dutch.
• Have a background in gaming (or just love horses - that counts too!)

Let’s be honest: this job won’t make you as rich as working at Amazon or Google. But we can promise something they can’t: a calm, flexible role with a 32-hour workweek, no crunch, and a team that actually cares about the product and each other.

• ⏰ 32-hour workweek: spread across four (8h) or five (~6.5h) days.
• 💶 Salary: €4,000 – €5,000 gross per month (depending on experience)
• 🏖️ Time off: 25 vacation days + two paid weeks during our company Christmas break.
• 💻 Extras: Company laptop, €500 work from home budget, €1000 yearly personal development budget.
• 🚆 Commute covered: 100% public transport reimbursement or a free parking spot at the office.
• 🏢 Flexible/Hybrid work: From our cosy office (±2 days a week) or your home office — your choice.
• (Office dog included 🐶).
• 🌱 Autonomy: High degree of freedom and ownership in your work.
• 💭 Your needs matter: Consider these benefits a baseline. Tell us what helps you thrive, and we’ll see what’s possible.

Please note that we do not offer relocation or visa support. If you need either of these, please don’t apply — it’s truly a waste of both our time.

We are an award-winning game studio who created the browser management game Horse Reality, a realistic horse breeding game with nearly half a million registered players. Built from scratch in one big monolith, we’re migrating everything to scalable microservices. We value a culture of autonomy, collaboration and continuous improvement, keeping both our KPIs and player experience in focus!

We believe great games come from happy developers. That’s why we ditched crunch, kept meetings short, and made the 32-hour workweek our new normal.