Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer (Theme Park Focused)
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Overview
Job Description
We're looking for a Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer to join the Gigantic Playground team. You'll play a central role in driving technological innovation for our clients - primarily in the business-to-consumer space - by crafting cutting-edge interactive experiences for their customers. The work spans exploring technology solutions, building prototypes, and shipping production-ready systems in collaboration with internal, client, and partner teams. We expect you to keep sharpening your craft, share what you learn, and push the people around you to do the same.
The ideal candidate is a skilled developer and engineer who adapts quickly, is deeply curious about emerging tech, is genuinely AI-native (beyond vibe-coding), and can discern good output from bad and lean on agents as a real force multiplier. You're self-motivated and can run independently, but you thrive in a collaborative team, prioritize end-user experience, and have a firm grasp of project lifecycles. Quality matters. Speed matters. Both, at once, in a fast-paced environment.
The Gigantic Playground team specializes in envisioning and implementing innovative ways for end-users to interact with technology, often in ways that don't look like traditional technology at all. We own the full architecture: ideation, system design, development, and installation, in partnership with our clients.
Responsibilities
Design, build, and ship production-grade systems end-to-end - frontend, backend, infrastructure, and the operational glue in between - on time, on budget, and at high quality.
Own technical decisions on architecture, cloud topology, observability, deployment, and security for the projects you lead.
Write secure, resilient, well-tested code, and hold the bar on code review for the people you work alongside.
Debug hard problems - production incidents, performance regressions, concurrency bugs, distributed systems weirdness - and write up what you learn so the team gets stronger.
Build prototypes and proofs of concept to learn quickly (hours, not days), validate ideas, and de-risk technical decisions before committing to a direction.
Mentor teammates and serve as the rubber duck for tougher technical problems. Make the people around you better.
Research new technologies and tools and contribute to refining team processes and engineering practices to deliver excellence.
Provide rough effort estimates and technical scope on new opportunities, and occasionally help present technical options to client stakeholders.
Core Skills & Mindset
Experience in systems architecture and design - can architect new systems from scratch and reason about trade-offs at the system level.
AI-native, well beyond vibe coding!
Can be the rubber duck for teammates. Docs, diagrams, walkthroughs - you make the team smarter around you.
Strong full-stack chops: Web UX/UI, REST APIs, backend, DB modeling, CI/CD, and deployment automation.
Client-facing experience and strong presentation and communication skills.
Solid at requirements gathering and technical / non-technical documentation.
Comfortable with ALM tools (Jira, ClickUp, Git, etc.) and agile principles, including scrum and backlog management.
Self-driven, dynamic, and an exceptional problem-solver.
Able to extract lessons from both wins and losses while keeping a positive attitude about it.
Strong awareness of web performance - on-page and external (CDN, caching, etc.).
Experience with automated testing for both backend and frontend.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, systems management, or another engineering discipline - or equivalent field experience.
Requirements
Full-stack development experience (REST APIs, backend, DB modeling, CI/CD, Web UX/UI, HTML/CSS, mobile responsive).
Ability to design and develop highly reliable, fault-tolerant systems, and to lean on AI tools to produce high-quality production-ready code.
Proficiency in Linux/MacOS command-line tools and Bash shell scripting (Linux Server or MacOS power-user level).
Proficiency in automated testing and unit testing.
Knowledge of infrastructure as code.
Experience with databases
- 5+ years of industry experience required; 7+ years preferred
Other Required Technologies (≈80% coverage)
You don't need to be world-class at all of these, but you should hit roughly 80% of this list with real depth.
- GitHub is required - you must have an OSS repo that demonstrates your skills!
IDE with an agent, and a debugger with and without an agent. You should be fluent in both modes.
Node.js with TypeScript, including deep async/await fluency.
Linux server power user.
Infrastructure as Code - Terraform, Ansible, etc.
Cloud - AWS, Azure, GCP. Specifically: load balancers, VMs, security, cloud storage, cost estimation, cloud networking topologies, and cloud auto-scaling.
Logging and observability, including event pipelines (EventHub, Firehose, etc.).
Web frontend: React (and associated tooling like Webpack).
Docker - building Dockerfiles with complex setups and multi-phase builds.
Docker Swarm - and you must hide your secrets!
RabbitMQ & Message Patterns
NoSQL DBs - Postgres, MongoDB, DocumentDB experience.
OpenAPI / Swagger.
Secure code - understanding of WEB & API attack vectors.
Distributed processing - concurrency, race conditions, parallel processing.
Caching services - programming for CDNs, ETAGs, etc.
Test frameworks - Chai, Mocha, or similar.
Preferred Qualifications
Multi-lingual - English / Spanish / Japanese. (Japanese fluency is a huge edge!)
Mobile / Desktop: Flutter (and other mobile tech - React Native, Swift, Kotlin).
MQTT or other message bus experience.
Python
Orlando-based
Kubernetes
ClickUp experience
Broader database experience
AsyncAPI
CMS dev and integration experience - Contentstack, especially.
Load testing - k6 or similar, plus architecting for load.
Redis cache or similar.
Advanced DevOps, cloud CI/CD, Ansible, and extensive container deployments at scale.
Background in test-driven design.
Work Environment
Gigantic Playground is a remote-first agency environment with team members located across the US.
Gigantic Playground is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Gigantic Playground recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, status as a protected veteran, or genetic information.
Gigantic Playground participates in the E-Verify program. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form (I-9) upon hire.
Gigantic Playground is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Gigantic Playground recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, status as a protected veteran, or genetic information.
Gigantic Playground participates in the E-Verify program. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form (I-9) upon hire.
Automate your job search with Sonara.
Submit 10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application.
