[Hiring] Senior Mod Developer @Spark Universe

Role Description

We’re looking for a Senior Mod Developer to join our team at Essential, the world’s leading Minecraft mod used by millions of players. As a Senior Mod Developer, you will take ownership of major features, collaborate across teams, and mentor fellow developers to encourage team growth.

What you will do

• Take ownership of the development of core systems and features.
• Review project specifications and designs with a critical eye, and collaborate with our product and design team to refine them.
• Mentor junior and mid-level developers by guiding them towards solutions, getting involved in pair programming, and knowledge sharing.
• Work around undocumented or changing platform behavior, including reconciling differences between a wide range of Minecraft versions.
• Review code from team members with an emphasis on correctness and cross-version compatibility.
• Improve how the team works as a whole by contributing towards internal tooling, code standards, and development processes.

Within 1 month, you will...

• Complete onboarding and gain understanding of our values, and product development process.
• Learn our internal workflows, development environment setup, and best practices.
• Build strong working relationships with other developers, your Engineering Lead, and other team members to ensure efficient collaboration.

Within 3 months, you will...

• Ship your first significant feature end-to-end.
• Become a regular code reviewer, focusing on correctness and compatibility across the Minecraft versions we support.
• Be comfortable debugging and writing Mixins in our codebase, focusing on compatibility with future Minecraft updates and other mods.
• Start supporting less experienced team members through pair programming and walking them through difficult problems.

Within 6 months, you will...

• Own a large feature or system within Essential and be the go-to person for it.
• Lead a migration to a new Minecraft version.
• Be someone that team members go to when they are stuck and help them grow the skills to solve problems on their own.
• Identify areas of the codebase that need attention and lead efforts to improve them.

Qualifications

• Prior experience in a software engineering team.
• Strong programming experience with Java and Kotlin.
• Experience building complex user-facing applications.
• Experience mentoring other developers and giving code reviews.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, investigate unfamiliar systems, and make technical decisions with confidence.
• Clear communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical concepts and collaborate effectively across teams.
• Comfortable with Git-based workflows and project management tools such as Linear or Jira (we use Linear).
• Bonus: Experience with Minecraft modding or Mixin.
• Bonus: Experience with Kotlin coroutines and asynchronous programming.
• Bonus: Experience with CI/CD (we use GitHub Actions) and Python.

Benefits

• 46.790€–53.809€ gross per annum based on 40 hours per week as an employee.
• 24 days PTO (plus Bank Holidays & Christmas Shutdown).
• Generous paid sick leave (varies per country).
• Clear career growth and progression opportunities within the company.
• Flexible working hours within legal and reasonable boundaries.
• Employment is currently available in Germany, the UK, Republic of Ireland and Austria, with Canada, the US and Croatia following soon. *Rate and benefits will differ based on local currency.*
• Fixed-term contractor arrangements available outside of employment countries. Not all benefits apply to contractors.

Additional Information

• Applicants must be older than 18 years old.
• Fully remote.