Junior Backend Engineer

Location: Kyiv, ua

Company Description

Founded in 1999, the company has a premium listing on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange and is focused on regulated and regulating markets across its B2B business. By leveraging its proprietary technology, Playtech delivers innovative products and services to ensure a safe, engaging and entertaining gaming experience.

As the gaming industry's leading technology company, it combines business intelligence-driven software, services, content, and platform technology to drive excellence and innovation across the sector. Read more about who we are and what we do here: www.playtechpeople.com and www.playtech.com

Here at Playtech, we genuinely believe that people are our biggest asset. Diverse thoughts, experiences, and individual characteristics enrich our work environment and lead to better business decisions. Embracing differences and maintaining transparency in our processes is the core of Playtech's overall commitment to responsible business practices.

Ready to level up your career?

Playtech's GPAS (Gaming Platform as a Service) Team is looking for a curious, well-motivated Junior Backend Engineer to grow into a Scala Developer. We do not expect deep knowledge of the Scala ecosystem or production experience with every technology listed above. A strong candidate may still be learning Scala but can break down an unfamiliar problem, find missing information, evaluate possible solutions, ask focused questions, and verify the outcome.

Job Description

Your influential mission. You will...

• Develop, test, refactor, and support production backend services with guidance from experienced engineers
• Take part in software design, code reviews, and technical discussions
• Understand the goal behind each task, clarify unclear requirements, and consider edge cases
• Verify that your changes solve the original problem and work as expected
• Investigate problems independently, communicate blockers early and ask focused questions when needed
• Learn Scala and the GPAS domain while gradually taking ownership of small features from requirement to production
• Collaborate with the GPAS and platform teams and share what you learn

Qualifications

Components for success. You have... 

• Good programming and problem-solving fundamentals
• Practical experience with Scala, Java, or Kotlin through work, study, open-source contributions, or personal projects
• Understanding of object-oriented and functional programming principles
• The ability to work with collections, choose suitable data structures, and transform data clearly
• Basic understanding of algorithmic complexity, state management, and error handling
• Understanding of JVM memory, execution, and concurrency fundamentals
• Basic knowledge of backend development, APIs, databases, and client-server architecture
• The ability to compare options, explain trade-offs, validate assumptions, and communicate technical decisions
• Proactive learning habits, openness to feedback, and responsibility for the result of your work
• Good communication in English

You'll get extra points for... 

• Exposure to Scala through work, study, open-source contributions, or personal projects, or at least get familiar with how it looks to understand whether it fits candidate preferences
• Familiarity with asynchronous programming and distributed or event-driven systems
• Experience with containers, CI/CD, cloud platforms, or Linux

Thrive in a culture that values...

• A friendly, cooperative, and goal-oriented team of experienced professionals.
• Clear goals and a results-driven environment. 
• Open communication, knowledge sharing, and mutual support across teams. 
• Initiative-taking and a confident approach at the workplace. 
• Collaborative and supportive culture as well as stable long-term career opportunities. 
• Global scope and inclusive working environment where you can engage with diverse teams and perspectives. 
• Constant learning and development opportunities and professional growth programs. 
• An active lifestyle and mental well-being, supported through sports classes, master classes, and monthly well-being activities. 

Additional Information

GPAS UNIT

We invite a Junior Scala Developer to become a part of Playtech as a new member of the GPAS product team. Gaming Platform as a Service aka GPAS is Playtech’s exclusive distributed games delivery platform that currently has more than 1000 games running on it. GPAS is a highly accessible, multi-tenant, scalable, distributed and event-driven system written in Scala using the Pekko framework. We use Couchbase as a hot storage and AWS S3/DynamoDB as our cold storage to ensure we can handle nearly a billion transactions per day. The platform supports slot and multiplayer games, and its architecture can be extended to other game types.

Playtech is an equal opportunities employer. Our mission is to welcome everyone and create inclusive teams. We celebrate differences and encourage everyone to join us and be themselves at work.