At Couch Heroes, we’re exploring new ground for the MMO genre. In a world where fantasy and ancient technology intertwine, players explore shattered realms, grapple across verticality, solve puzzles, and push back corruption, with progression driven by player expression and discovery. We envision creating a bridge between the gamers of the 80s all the way to the gamers of today. We’re developing in Unreal Engine, in early production, with a team spanning multiple countries. We’re remote-first, based in the UK, and scaling to support a multi-year live-service roadmap. We value autonomy, curiosity, and collaborative ownership.

Role Overview

A persistent MMO needs build, deployment, and infrastructure systems that are reliable, fast, and scalable. We need a Development Operations Engineer who can build and maintain the systems that keep development running and prepare the infrastructure for live operations. You will report to the CTO and work closely with gameplay engineering, backend services, QA, and production. You will own build pipelines, deployment automation, infrastructure provisioning, and the operational tooling that the entire development team depends on.

Your Role

1. Build Systems and CI/CD: Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for the game client, server builds, web services, and tools. Manage Unreal Engine build pipelines (client packaging, server builds, content cooking, and asset validation), implement automated testing integration, and manage source control workflows and branching strategies.
2. Infrastructure and Operations: Provision and manage cloud infrastructure using Azure, AWS, or equivalent. Build infrastructure-as-code using Terraform, Ansible, or equivalent. Design monitoring, alerting, and logging systems, and plan the architecture for game server deployment (dedicated server hosting, auto-scaling, regional deployment, and failover).
3. Collaboration and Support: Support the development team with tooling and automation; be responsive to build failures; collaborate with backend engineers on deployment strategies and service orchestration; work with QA to maintain stable test environments; and document architecture and procedures.

Must-Haves

1. 4+ years of experience in DevOps, infrastructure engineering, or build engineering, with at least one shipped game or live-service product.
2. Strong experience with CI/CD pipeline design and maintenance using Jenkins, Azure Pipelines, GitHub Actions, or equivalent.
3. Experience with cloud infrastructure provisioning and management on Azure, AWS, or GCP.
4. Proficiency with containerization and orchestration (Docker and Kubernetes).
5. Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Ansible, or equivalent).
6. Scripting proficiency in Python, Bash, or PowerShell for automation.
7. Strong communication skills and a service-oriented approach.
8. Deep understanding of Perforce and Git.

Nice-to-Haves

1. Experience with Unreal Engine build pipelines and content cooking workflows.
2. Experience managing game server infrastructure: dedicated servers, matchmaking infrastructure, and regional deployment.
3. Experience with monitoring and observability stacks: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, or Datadog.
4. Familiarity with database administration and backup strategies for game state persistence.
5. Experience with cost optimization for cloud infrastructure.

About You

1. You build systems that others depend on and take that responsibility seriously.
2. You automate by default.
3. You are comfortable working through ambiguity and planning for a future still being defined.
4. You are responsive when things break and thoughtful about prevention.
5. You work autonomously in a remote environment.