Senior / Staff Backend Engineer (API) – Economy

Job Overview

VRChat is known as one of the most vibrant social hangout immersive destinations — a place where people gather around shared interests, build communities, host events, and create entirely new worlds and experiences together. With over 250,000 user-created worlds and growing, the platform powers concerts, meetups, performances, niche communities, and creator-run businesses across VR, desktop, and mobile. People connect across time zones and cultures, and entire communities organize their social lives inside VRChat. It’s a live, global creator ecosystem with meaningful scale and long-term momentum.

We have built a team of experienced engineers and product leaders from companies such as Netflix, Meta, Microsoft, Roblox, Google, Amazon, Unity, Spotify, Discord, Twitch, and others. Backed by $100M from Makers Fund, Anthos Capital, and HTC, we’re investing in durable platform infrastructure — including the economic systems that support creators and end-users worldwide. 

About the Economy Team

The Economy team designs and operates the systems that power creator monetization and platform-wide transactions. Our work ensures creators can reliably earn income while the platform remains stable, sustainable, and built for long-term growth.

Our team operates with high velocity and high impact—without sacrificing work-life integration. We value technical excellence, mutual respect, and solving hard problems together.

What We're Looking For

We’re looking for a Senior / Staff Backend Engineer (API) – Economy to join our Economy team. You will play a foundational role in architecting and evolving the systems that power how creators earn and how users transact across VRChat globally.

This role focuses on building high-integrity backend infrastructure that supports subscriptions, digital ownership, creator monetization, payment processing, and economic analytics at global scale. You’ll work primarily with Node.js and TypeScript, designing systems where correctness, auditability, reliability, and compliance are non-negotiable.

If you’re excited about building financial-grade systems for a thriving global creator ecosystem, this role could be the perfect fit.

We build and scale: VRC+ subscription infrastructure

Central and avatar marketplaces

First-party and creator-driven digital content systems

Digital credits, wallets, inventory, ownership, and subscription models

Creator payouts and reconciliation

Monetization events and purchase flows

Economic analytics and reporting

Internal and external tooling supporting creators and platform teams

What You'll Do: Design and implement scalable backend services in Node.js and TypeScript

Ensure transactional integrity in high-volume economic systems

Model digital ownership, entitlements, wallets, and payouts

Build and evolve systems supporting both first-party and creator-driven content

Drive refactors that improve maintainability and long-term platform evolution

Participate in architectural discussions shaping the future of VRChat’s economy stack

Design reliable economic event representations

Ensure traceability across payment transactions and reporting systems

Enable subscription and marketplace analytics

Support experimentation and feature iteration

Maintain reconciliation accuracy and reporting integrity

Contribute to fraud detection and prevention systems

Own services from development through deployment and monitoring

Improve CI/CD reliability and release safety

Work within containerized environments (Docker)

Contribute to Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Strengthen observability, monitoring, and incident response practices

Occasionally jump in to resolve critical production issues

Senior-Level Expectations Design and implement scalable backend services

Own systems end-to-end through production

Improve performance, observability, and operational resilience

Partner cross-functionally with Product, Design, Data, Finance, Trust & Safety, Infrastructure, and peer engineering teams

Lead architectural initiatives across the economy stack

Shape long-term technical direction

Identify systemic risks and drive preventative improvements

Mentor engineers and elevate engineering standards

Influence and inform cross-team design decisions

Staff-Level Expectations (In Addition) Bring credible experience designing and operating financial or high-integrity transactional systems at scale

Architect cross-team economic platform primitives (e.g., entitlement models, payment flows, reconciliation frameworks, event contracts)

Define long-term technical strategy for the economy stack, balancing scalability, compliance, and product velocity

Lead strategic architecture initiatives spanning multiple services or teams, and high stake external partners and integrations

Mentor senior engineers and influence technical direction across the organization

Influence cross-team design decisions at platform scale

Qualifications 5+ years of experience in backend engineering for SaaS, fintech, marketplaces, or online platforms

Deep proficiency in Node.js and TypeScript

Strong experience with relational and non-relational databases (MySQL, MongoDB, Redis)

Experience managing message queues, caching strategies, and WebSocket systems

Proven experience building and maintaining external integrations (payment vendors, fintech platforms)

Strong understanding of profiling, optimization tradeoffs, and observability

Experience operating under PCI DSS, GDPR, and PII requirements

Experience building subscription engines, marketplaces, accounting systems, or invoicing workflows

Familiarity with AWS, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code

Comfortable navigating ambiguity across experimental and high-certainty requirements

Experience working in complex, evolving codebases

Bonus Points Experience with event-driven or high-throughput transactional systems

Experience integrating with Steam, Oculus, Apple, or Google Play payment systems

Experience leading large-scale refactors or architectural migrations

Experience building internal operational tooling or creator-facing systems

Full-stack development experience

Active participation in creator economies or VRChat itself

Team Fit & Mindset Independent and proactive self-starter

Low ego, high ownership, and collaborative

Growth-oriented and adaptable

Empathetic toward creators and end users

Calm and clear-headed during high-traffic events or critical incidents

Benefits Work from anywhere — VRChat is a 100% remote company

Flexible working hours with core collaboration overlap

Health benefits

401(k) for US employees & Group RRSP for Canadian employees

Stock options

Generous paid holiday schedule

Unlimited/flexible vacation time

Paid parental leave

VRChat is an equal opportunity employer. We foster a diverse, creative, and collaborative environment where anyone can contribute meaningfully to our roadmap and mission. If you’re a passionate engineer excited about building the economic foundation of the metaverse, we’d love to hear from you.

All job offers are subject to satisfactory referencing and background checks