Description review
DevOps Engineer
Colonist · Remote · back to the listing
HR standards
50/100
needs work
Title ↔ description
91/100
strong
Reads as
DevOps Engineer
95% confident
What this role officially is
ICT system administrator — ESCO, the EU occupation classification
ICT system administrators are responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer and network systems, servers, workstations and peripheral devices. They may acquire, install, or upgrade computer components and software; automate routine tasks; write computer programs; troubleshoot; train and supervise staff; and provide technical support. They ensure optimum system integrity, security, backup and performance.
Also known as: enterprise administrator, IT system administrator, ICT systems administrator, ICT sysadmins, IT systems administrator, ICT sysadmin
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What the listing never says
- 35 bullet points. Long requirement lists deter qualified candidates, who read them as hard gates. Scope clarity
- No pay range published. Candidates cannot tell whether applying is worth their time. Pay transparency
The listing, marked up
Wanted: Colonist DevOps Engineer
Working Hours: We work asynchronously and value outcomes over hours
Location: Fully Remote
Compensation: Paid in USD. Negotiable based on experience and location
About Colonist
We're building the biggest digital board game platform on the internet. Players start 250k games every day. Last year: 60M games, 3,0 37 years1 of play. We're a fully remote, asynchronous team spread across multiple continents, focused on crafting extremely polished digital board games that people truly love.
About The Role
Most apps scale by splitting users apart. We can't. Players share one live game state. Every lag spike is felt mid-game. One viral video can 10x our traffic overnight. Your job: absorb 50k CCU without dropping a single game.
You will own the infrastructure behind every game session: clusters, deploys, databases, the edge, and the path from merge to production. You will make our infra knowledge shared, so no system depends on one person.
What You'll Do
• Own the stack behind every game: game, matchmaking and lobby servers on Kubernetes
• Manage cluster and cloud resources as code in Terraform
• Scale servers up and down with live traffic. Pay for players, not idle machines
• Ship updates often, without kicking players out of live games
• Keep terabytes of game data and replays fast and cheap. PostgreSQL, Redis, NATS under real load
• Defend the edge from bots and attacks. Cloudflare, rate limiting, Turnstile, R2.
• Own observability across Sentry and New Relic. Consolidate monitoring and close the gaps
• Document everything: systems, decisions, runbooks, so infrastructure knowledge lives in the team
• Build self-service paths so other engineers use infrastructure confidently.
• When something breaks, thousands notice in seconds. Find the root cause. Make it never recur
Requirements
• You love hard technical problems. Scale, latency and cost excite you
• You have senior-level experience in DevOps
• You have run Kubernetes in production: rollouts, autoscaling, networking, load balancers, and debugging a bad deploy
• You run infra lean. You optimize before adding hardware
• You document as you go. Runbooks and decisions are natural outputs of your work.
• You are comfortable with Linux, Docker, and a CI system you did not build
• You have operated PostgreSQL and Redis under real traffic: slow queries, connection limits, and schema migrations without downtime
• You have run a message broker in production; we use NATS, but equivalent experience transfers
• You have put Cloudflare, or a similar edge, in front of a public service
• You can debug a live incident across app logs, metrics, the database, and the edge
• AI-forward mindset. We see AI fluency as a real multiplier
• Deeply independent. You learn a system from its code, configs and monitoring.
• Strong written communication. You explain complex systems clearly in async settings, to technical and non-technical audiences alike
• Collaborative by default. You share context proactively, help other engineers understand infrastructure, and never operate as a silo
Nice to Have
• Experience structuring documentation for AI consumption: machine-readable runbooks, structured architecture notes, agent-readable formats
• Experience building self-service infrastructure paths for other engineers: golden paths, templates, or internal tooling
• Security depth beyond the basics: threat modelling, access control, audit practices, governance guardrails
• You've run real-time or multiplayer systems where shared state matters.
• Previous experience as a solo or near-solo infrastructure engineer at a small company
Our Values at Colonist
We strongly adhere to these values in our team - if these resonate, then you'll love working here!
Dependability
We're self-driven players who deliver without needing supervision. When we commit to something, we make it happen.
Ownership
We take full responsibility and go beyond our roles to improve Colonist.
Clear Communication
In our remote environment, written communication is key. We're direct, structured, and always keep our team in the loop.
Efficient Execution
We move fast and focus on impact. Instead of getting stuck on perfect solutions, we find practical ways forward and get things done.
Continuous Learning
We're curious problem solvers who love a challenge. We constantly seek new ideas, embrace feedback, and aren't afraid to change our minds when we're wrong.
Why Colonist
• Your work ships to 3,6M+ yearly active players
• We have hard problems, most engineers only read about: live shared state, viral spikes, lean scale
• Async culture; deep work, no performative meetings
• Unlimited vacation, yearly team offsite, full work equipment
• Budget to experiment with any AI tool you want
• Access to all company metrics and internal discussions
Originally posted on Himalayas
Working Hours: We work asynchronously and value outcomes over hours
Location: Fully Remote
Compensation: Paid in USD. Negotiable based on experience and location
About Colonist
We're building the biggest digital board game platform on the internet. Players start 250k games every day. Last year: 60M games, 3,0 37 years1 of play. We're a fully remote, asynchronous team spread across multiple continents, focused on crafting extremely polished digital board games that people truly love.
About The Role
Most apps scale by splitting users apart. We can't. Players share one live game state. Every lag spike is felt mid-game. One viral video can 10x our traffic overnight. Your job: absorb 50k CCU without dropping a single game.
You will own the infrastructure behind every game session: clusters, deploys, databases, the edge, and the path from merge to production. You will make our infra knowledge shared, so no system depends on one person.
What You'll Do
• Own the stack behind every game: game, matchmaking and lobby servers on Kubernetes
• Manage cluster and cloud resources as code in Terraform
• Scale servers up and down with live traffic. Pay for players, not idle machines
• Ship updates often, without kicking players out of live games
• Keep terabytes of game data and replays fast and cheap. PostgreSQL, Redis, NATS under real load
• Defend the edge from bots and attacks. Cloudflare, rate limiting, Turnstile, R2.
• Own observability across Sentry and New Relic. Consolidate monitoring and close the gaps
• Document everything: systems, decisions, runbooks, so infrastructure knowledge lives in the team
• Build self-service paths so other engineers use infrastructure confidently.
• When something breaks, thousands notice in seconds. Find the root cause. Make it never recur
Requirements
• You love hard technical problems. Scale, latency and cost excite you
• You have senior-level experience in DevOps
• You have run Kubernetes in production: rollouts, autoscaling, networking, load balancers, and debugging a bad deploy
• You run infra lean. You optimize before adding hardware
• You document as you go. Runbooks and decisions are natural outputs of your work.
• You are comfortable with Linux, Docker, and a CI system you did not build
• You have operated PostgreSQL and Redis under real traffic: slow queries, connection limits, and schema migrations without downtime
• You have run a message broker in production; we use NATS, but equivalent experience transfers
• You have put Cloudflare, or a similar edge, in front of a public service
• You can debug a live incident across app logs, metrics, the database, and the edge
• AI-forward mindset. We see AI fluency as a real multiplier
• Deeply independent. You learn a system from its code, configs and monitoring.
• Strong written communication. You explain complex systems clearly in async settings, to technical and non-technical audiences alike
• Collaborative by default. You share context proactively, help other engineers understand infrastructure, and never operate as a silo
Nice to Have
• Experience structuring documentation for AI consumption: machine-readable runbooks, structured architecture notes, agent-readable formats
• Experience building self-service infrastructure paths for other engineers: golden paths, templates, or internal tooling
• Security depth beyond the basics: threat modelling, access control, audit practices, governance guardrails
• You've run real-time or multiplayer systems where shared state matters.
• Previous experience as a solo or near-solo infrastructure engineer at a small company
Our Values at Colonist
We strongly adhere to these values in our team - if these resonate, then you'll love working here!
Dependability
We're self-driven players who deliver without needing supervision. When we commit to something, we make it happen.
Ownership
We take full responsibility and go beyond our roles to improve Colonist.
Clear Communication
In our remote environment, written communication is key. We're direct, structured, and always keep our team in the loop.
Efficient Execution
We move fast and focus on impact. Instead of getting stuck on perfect solutions, we find practical ways forward and get things done.
Continuous Learning
We're curious problem solvers who love a challenge. We constantly seek new ideas, embrace feedback, and aren't afraid to change our minds when we're wrong.
Why Colonist
• Your work ships to 3,6M+ yearly active players
• We have hard problems, most engineers only read about: live shared state, viral spikes, lean scale
• Async culture; deep work, no performative meetings
• Unlimited vacation, yearly team offsite, full work equipment
• Budget to experiment with any AI tool you want
• Access to all company metrics and internal discussions
Originally posted on Himalayas