Pureplay Lead Platform Engineer

Location

Remote. Open to candidates globally with strong English communication skills and meaningful time zone overlap with our US and Australia-based teams is required.

About Pureplay

Pureplay is an early-stage, founder-led company building a next-generation simulator golf platform focused on realism, high-quality gameplay, and a connected product experience around the core game.

We are pre-revenue and actively building toward launch. The team brings strong Unreal Engine expertise and has made meaningful progress on the core gameplay experience.

The next phase focuses on building the platform around the game, including identity, subscriptions, customer accounts, analytics, support workflows, and commercial tooling, to connect the full product experience end-to-end. This role will play a key part in architecting and building that platform from the ground up.

The Opportunity

We are hiring our first platform engineer to lead the architecture and build of the systems that power the broader platform around the core simulator experience. From day one, your job is to set the architecture, build the hard parts yourself, define the AI-assisted workflow the team operates inside, and make sure the platform ships on time.

This role owns the platform that connects the full customer journey — from website and purchase through authentication, gameplay access, and ongoing player insights. Scope includes identity, billing, account systems, analytics, and the underlying data layer that ties everything together.

The work is highly cross-functional. You will partner closely with Unreal Engine game development and course tooling teams across shared systems, including identity, data models, player workflows, and product experience. This includes defining how the platform interfaces with the game through APIs, services, and shared data models. Success depends on building systems that integrate cleanly and operate as a cohesive experience across platform and game.

You will be the most senior platform voice in the company, working alongside an existing Unreal and tooling team. You will help hire and shape the platform engineering function as it grows. Not everything is fully defined. This role helps determine what needs to exist for launch, what must scale from day one, and how the platform evolves over time.

What You’ll Do

• Own the architecture and build Pureplay’s custom API and application database that serve as the source of truth for identity, accounts, entitlements, and integrations
• Set the AI-assisted development standard for the team: write the CLAUDE.md files, build the custom skills, define the agentic workflows, establish review practices, and draw the line between generated and hand-written code.
• Define and implement the end-to-end customer journey from website through purchase, authentication, download, and gameplay access, including account provisioning and entitlement flows
• Lead engineer resources who reports to you, setting direction through well-scoped tickets, reviewing their work, and holding the bar on quality without becoming the bottleneck
• Define and implement the identity model that unifies website login, game accounts, subscription status, support interactions, affiliate identity, and future platform experiences under a single Pureplay account
• Define how systems such as Webflow, Stripe, identity providers, PlayFab, Zendesk, affiliate tooling, and analytics infrastructure connect into a cohesive, scalable platform
• Integrate with services such as Webflow, Cognito or Auth0, Stripe, PlayFab, Zendesk, affiliate tooling, and AWS data infrastructure
• Build the first version of the customer account and player analytics platform, including dashboards, shot history, usage history, golf-specific metrics, and player-facing insights
• Help shape the event model and data architecture needed to support robust player analytics across both web and game surfaces
• Work closely with the Unreal Engine game team and course creation tool team on overlapping areas such as identity, provisioning, data models, analytics events, launcher and download flows, and player-facing product experiences
• Help define the backend and data model for future platform capabilities including consumer analytics portals, golf course owner portals, commercial operator tools, and mobile or native applications
• Establish strong standards for security, observability, performance, maintainability, and scalability

What We’re Looking For

You are a lead engineer: architect in judgment, builder in pace. You have deep backend and data architecture experience, a track record of integrating complex systems into cohesive platforms, and the leadership instinct to set direction for others.

You have fully adopted AI as a force multiplier and use AI coding tools in a disciplined, high-output way, accelerating development while maintaining strong judgment around quality, security, and scalability. You move fluidly between building, system design, and integration work and are comfortable translating product overlap into clean APIs, data contracts, and well-defined system boundaries. You are also comfortable partnering closely with Unreal engineers and tooling teams to ensure platform systems cleanly support the core game and content pipeline.

• 8+ years building production software in a highly hands-on role
• 2+ years leading engineers, as a manager or technical lead.
• 1+ years leveraging AI coding tools
• Strong backend and systems architecture experience, with full-stack capability
• Experience building customer-facing platforms with authentication, subscriptions, and analytics
• Proven ability to integrate multiple systems into a cohesive product experience
• Strong product instincts and ability to prioritize for impact under real constraints
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and turning it into structured, working systems
• Experience with modern TypeScript-based stacks and cloud infrastructure such as AWS
• Experience with tools such as Stripe and modern identity providers such as Auth0 or Cognito

Strongly preferred

• Familiarity with golf, simulation, or performance-based data products
• Experience with game-adjacent platforms or player account systems
• Experience building analytics-heavy products or user-facing dashboards
• Experience with PlayFab or similar backend systems

Who will excel in this role

The right person for this role is:

• Architect-level in judgment, builder-level in pace
• Comfortable owning ambiguity and turning it into structure
• Able to move between product UX, backend systems, integrations, and data design
• Excited by building a real platform from zero, not maintaining a mature codebase
• Obsessed with shipping, but not careless
• You iterate quickly, learn from what does not work, and adjust without ego
• AI-native, but skeptical enough to verify, refactor, and secure what gets generated

Compensation & BenefitsSalary Range: $125,000 - $175,000 AUD

The starting pay range for the United States is $125,000 - $175,000 AUD per year. Individual salaries and positioning within the range are determined through a wide variety of factors, including but not limited to education, experience, knowledge, skills, and geography. While individual pay could fall anywhere in the range based on these factors, it is not common to start at the high end or top of the range.

We also provide:

• Remote-first work environment with flexibility to work where you’re most effective
• Flexible PTO—we trust people to take the time they need
• 401(k) with employer match
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Pureplay is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or other protected characteristics.

By submitting your application, you agree that we may use your information to evaluate your candidacy and contact you regarding this role.