Intermediate Cloud & Systems Engineer

 

This is an opportunity to work for a remote-first company. Only applicants living in British Columbia will be considered, with preference given to Victoria, BC.

Our Values

Driven by PLAYER OBSESSION , we look to craft unparalleled gaming experiences.

OWNERSHIP is our compass, propelling us to deliver exceptional results.

With a spirit of RESOURCEFULNESS , we fearlessly tackle challenges and defy limitations.

Driven by the ethos of CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT , we foster a culture of perpetual learning and growth.

About Kano

Kano is an independent game studio that has been building and running live games for over 18 years. Our games have long-running player communities, mature economies, live events, web and mobile platforms, and real business complexity behind them.

We're a small, remote-first team that is all-in on AI. We use it across the company, from engineering to finance to marketing. People here can make a visible impact quickly, so we look for people who take ownership, learn fast, and like replacing "the way it's always been done."

About the Role

You'll use AI tools and automation to run and modernize Kano's systems: the cloud infrastructure behind our live games, and the IT the rest of the company relies on. You'll join our Operations team, which looks after every Kano game, our internal systems and the projects coming next, and help keep all of it reliable, secure and cost-effective.

Keeping our games running comes first. Our infrastructure has grown over 18 years and runs on a mix of EC2, ECS containers and serverless. You'll bring fresh eyes to making it simpler, safer and less manual, and you'll have real room to make those changes.

The Right Person…

- Uses AI tools like Claude Code, Cursor or ChatGPT for real technical work, can show something they've automated or improved, and tests and validates the results.

- Wants to build AI-assisted tools that take repetitive work off the team's plate, with human review where it matters.

- Has solid fundamentals and a hands-on approach: verifies their work, troubleshoots methodically and knows when to ask for help.

- Would rather fix the root cause than patch the same problem twice.

What You'll Do

AI & Automation

- Build AI-assisted workflows for operations, such as alert triage, incident summaries, first-draft root-cause analyses and runbook upkeep.

- Use AI coding agents to write and refactor infrastructure code and scripts, with testing and review before anything reaches production.

- Set up access controls for our internal AI agents and tools: least-privilege credentials, audit logging and approvals for production changes.

- Trial new tools and services, and recommend what to adopt and what to retire.

Infrastructure & Cloud

- Run and improve the Linux servers and AWS infrastructure behind our live games (EC2, ECS, Lambda, VPC, IAM, S3, Route 53, Systems Manager), managed with Terraform, Chef, and Ansible.

- Carry out upgrades, patching and migrations onto containers or managed services, keeping disruption to players to a minimum.

- Support our Docker and ECS services and the pipelines that ship them (GitLab CI, AWS CodeDeploy, Fastlane).

Reliability & Data

- Maintain monitoring, alerting and logging (CloudWatch, InfluxDB, Grafana, Graylog) to catch problems before players notice.

- Look after our MySQL, MongoDB, Redis and Memcached services: backups, regular restore tests, upgrades and routine issues, working through complex replication or performance problems with the team.

- After onboarding, join the on-call rotation. You'll start with triage and escalation alongside experienced teammates, take on more as you get comfortable, and contribute to incident reviews so issues don't recur.

Company IT & Security

- Support the IT behind a remote team: staff accounts and access, VPN and internal network services, onboarding and offboarding, and help for non-technical teammates. Automate the requests that keep coming back.

- Maintain least-privilege access and MFA, apply security patches, review logs and support compliance requirements.

- Find AWS cost savings and implement them, such as right-sizing and removing unused resources.

- Writes clear documentation and explains technical issues in plain language.

Experience

Required

- 3+ years running production infrastructure in systems administration, IT operations, DevOps, SRE or platform engineering.

- Linux administration and a methodical approach to troubleshooting.

- AWS fundamentals: EC2, ECS, Lambda, VPC networking, IAM, S3 and CloudWatch.

- Networking fundamentals: TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VPNs and load balancing.

- Infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform) and scripting in Bash, Python or Ruby.

- Docker, and running containerized services in production.

- Running relational and/or NoSQL databases in production, including backups, restores and upgrades.

- Good operational judgment: testing changes, following review processes and knowing when to escalate.

- Regular, hands-on use of AI tools for technical work, and the judgment to check what they produce.

Nice to Have

- Building AI agents, LLM-powered tools, or automations using APIs, MCP or similar.

- MongoDB, Redis or Memcached at scale.

- Chef, Ansible, GitLab CI, AWS CodeDeploy or Fastlane.

- InfluxDB, Grafana or Graylog.

- AWS cost optimization, including Savings Plans and Reserved Instances.

- Supporting staff IT for a remote team.

- Experience in games or other always-on consumer services.

Salary

$85,000 - $100,00 CAD

The listed range reflects potential earnings for this role. Actual pay depends on experience and skills, and most hires start near the midpoint.
Kano is a remote-first workplace with an in-person attendance requirement 2-6 times a year.

What we offer

- Competitive wages determined by market research 

- Uncapped profit share program

- Health, dental and vision benefits 

- 3 weeks vacation to start

- Paid holiday shutdown in December

- 12 paid Care Days per year

- Yearly Continuous Improvement allowance 

- A results-driven company with a compassionate culture

- Opportunity to work on game projects that are enjoyed by millions of players worldwide!

- Ability to make a difference. Have an idea? Talk directly with leadership about it instead of running through layers of bureaucracy

 

About Kano

Since inception, Kano has released twelve gaming titles (seven of which are live serviced today), with over 35 million downloads and close to $100M in sales.

Bootstrapped in 2008, and achieving profitability in 2009, Kano continues to grow its team, game portfolio and player base as an independent gaming studio, with hit games like Mob Wars , Idle Distiller and Monster Country . 

Canadian owned and full-remote, we believe in giving small teams of talented people challenging problems and getting out of their way. That’s why we look for the best and brightest to join our team; people who have talent, vision, and commitment.

Check out this article If you'd like to get some insight into our hiring process, our employee manual to understand how and why we do things the way we do, and this fun little video for an intro to the team!   

- Better Business Bureau Accredited Business 15 year Milestone

- 2025 Great Place to Work Certified™

- 2024 Great Place to Work Certified™

- 2023 Great Place to Work Certified™

- 2022 Best Workplace™ for Mental Wellness

- 2022 Best Workplace™ in Canada - Less than 50 employees

- 2022 Best Workplace™ in British Columbia

- 2021 Best Workplace™ in British Columbia

- 2020 Best Workplaces™ in Canada – Less than 100 employees

- 2020 Best Workplaces™ for Inclusion

- 2020 Best Workplaces™ for Mental Wellness

- 2020 Best Workplaces™ in British Columbia

- 2019 Great Place to Work - British Columbia

- 2019 VIATEC Employer of the Year - Finalist

- 2018 VIATEC Company of the Year (11-49 Employees) - Winner

- 2018 VIATEC Employer of the Year - Finalist

- 2017 VIATEC Company of the Year (11-49 employees) - Finalist

- 2014 VIATEC Employer of the Year - Winner

*Kano is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, religion, marital status or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law*