Online Programmer - GOALS game studio (Stockholm or Remote)

Use the latest technology, challenge the industry and create the world's best football game for everyone


Imagine what the best multiplayer football game in the world can be like. Free-to-play, cross platform and gameplay-first. A game for everyone, with fair game design and where skills truly matter.

You are the first Online Programmer here at GOALS. Building the solution that allows millions of players to play our game simultaneously, accessible and enjoyable almost regardless of poor network and hardware specs.

Envision that you are part of the studio that changes the industry and develops what others thought was not even possible.

Now, take this vision - and bring it to life!
Your impact

As our first dedicated Online Programmer, you will be a vital player in the online parts of our game. In close collaboration with software engineers and colleagues from other crafts, your mission will be to identify online systems’ needs, evaluate requirements from game design and implement systems with clean interfaces. Always with a gameplay-first mindset.

In your day-to-day work, you will work with both game and backend developers to implement efficient and high quality online systems for our game. Your responsibilities will include the entire development process, from architecture and implementation to debugging and taking pride in the quality of your code.

We are building our game on Unreal Engine 5, and the game servers are hosted on a multi-region cloud-based (GCP) microservice architecture. We develop our backend services using Golang with Protobuf and follow modern best practices for orchestrating our services; among these, you’ll find Terraform, Kubernetes, Argo, and more.

With cross-play, fair gaming, and multiplayer as your top priorities, you will tackle questions such as:

How can we build a robust and automated solution for packaging and sending data from the game to the server under CPU constraints? For example, telemetry pipelines

How can we tune the game for multiple platforms and devices, ensuring a great player experience for potentially 100+ million players connecting to our servers from different devices simultaneously?

How do we best leverage the console APIs and make them fit into our ecosystem of internal services?

Focus Areas



- Design, implement, document, and test code for the game and drive initiatives for new features together with people from different disciplines

- Integrate third-party services and APIs/SDKs to deliver a smooth and coherent experience on all our target platforms (including Xbox, PlayStation)
- Develop interfaces for other game developers, connecting our cloud solution and game engine
- Work with Unreal Engine to develop stable, scalable, and efficient code
- Optimize for client CPU and memory usage with real-time requirements
- Collaborate with and support other teams working on the game
- Troubleshoot, identify, and solve bugs related to the online system


Who you are


We’re creating a game for everyone, and our studio should always represent that with a diverse team.

In this role, we're looking for someone who has experience working as a software engineer or similar and who is interested in network communications and 3rd party API integrations. You keep yourself up-to-date with new standards, tools, and solutions within networking, and the different quirks that come with them.

You probably enjoy getting to the bottom of things to examine bugs and technical limitations and possibilities, finding solutions that work well for both the game and the cloud. Furthermore, you can collaborate well with people from different disciplines, such as QA and Designers.

On paper, we believe that you have

- 3+ years of experience working as a Software Engineer
- Experience from Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo SDKs.
- Previously worked on Unreal Engine
- Skills in C/C++ network communications
- Knowledge of networking and application layer protocols such as TCP, UDP, HTTP, and HTTP2
- Experience working with real-time requirements
- University degree in Computer Science or similar


What's in it for you?


At GOALS we are all about encouraging creativity, curiosity, and innovation. We want a culture where people feel safe to be themselves, and where we support and treat each other with respect.

We empower flexibility and believe in a balanced workplace. We know that the best solutions will be created when everyone feels they can choose how and when to work. As an inclusive and international company, you decide where to work (hybrid remote/remote/onsite) and when to do the job.

We value our team and every individual is equally important to us. We offer great benefits that you can read more about here (https://careers.goals.co/pages/benefits)

About the Employment
The position is permanent, starting with 6 months of probationary employment. You can work from our Stockholm office, fully remote or hybrid. It is important that you are able to communicate unhindered in verbal/written English and that you can work in a timezone close to Stockholm (CET 0-3 hours).

For this position, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Join us!

GOALS is all about dreams coming true and we know this will only be possible when we have people within our team that add different skills and perspectives to what we’re doing.

From research, we know that women and members of other under-represented groups are less likely to apply for jobs when they feel like they don't meet every single qualification, even though they are suitable for the position.

Do you have the passion? We're committed to creating a diverse and inclusive studio environment and strongly encourage you to apply even though you don’t feel you tick every single box.

For this role we would like you to include:

- LinkedIn profile, CV, or any other document that shows your experience

About GOALS

GOALS is a Stockholm-based AAA game studio founded in 2021.

Recognizing there wasn’t a fast-paced, competitive, multiplayer-focused football game on the market we decided to change that. Let’s bring football into esports for real! Bridging the gap between the real world and the digital, we’re building something more that is more than a game.

Humble in the way we work; embracing that skilled and passionate people are the heart and core of our studio. Not humble in our objective; creating the best football game in the world.

We are making a game that is more competitive, more inclusive, and more fun to pl...