Senior Software Engineer

Who We Are

Ex Populus is a gaming, entertainment, and technology company that brings the world’s greatest developers, designers, creatives, and marketers together to move the industry forward with world class video games and technology solutions for the entertainment industry.

Ex Populus is a core contributor to the Xai blockchain. Xai was created to seamlessly bring the power of blockchain to gamers worldwide, without the complexity. By fully abstracting the wallet and network experience, Xai ensures that players engage with real value-driven experiences effortlessly—without ever needing to know a blockchain is there. Our vision is a future where ownership, trade, and open economies are a natural part of gaming, accessible to all, and as intuitive as the games themselves.

Ex Populus is assembling a small, elite R&D team to create innovative products at the intersection of AI, Web3, and gaming to unlock new revenue streams. As a Senior Experimental Software Engineer, you will play a critical role in conceptualizing, architecting, and developing entirely new products, 0 to 1. This is an opportunity to be part of a high-caliber, fast-moving team where your technical expertise and creativity will shape Ex Populus’ future.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in fast-moving, uncertain environments, enjoys tackling a wide variety of engineering challenges, and can turn early-stage ideas into tangible products. As a key member of a small, high-performing team, you will work on new product innovation, rapid prototyping, and experimental development across different domains—your work will be highly visible, valued, and central to shaping the future of our technology and business.

Who You Are

• Proven track record of driving highly successful product launches, taking projects from concept to production and delivering impactful, high-quality solutions that achieve real-world success.
• Experienced with taking ownership of projects from concept to production and ensuring their successful implementation at scale.
• A natural problem solver who steps up when needed, acting with conviction to drive decisions and guide the team toward successful outcomes.
• Comfortable leading significant parts of projects autonomously; taking responsibility for major technical decisions, and collaborating across disciplines to ship meaningful work.
• Adaptable and resourceful, able to work in highly dynamic environments where requirements shift, business priorities change, and prototypes may be deprecated or pivoted as new opportunities emerge.
• Excited about new technologies, able to quickly learn and adopt new tools, frameworks, and approaches as they arise.
• A strong communicator, capable of articulating technical trade-offs, raising potential risks, and collaborating effectively with engineers, product managers, and stakeholders.

What You’ll Do

• Demonstrate strong proficiency in our stack, including Google Cloud Platform, Terraform, Docker, TypeScript, React, Next.js, Express, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, and other relevant technologies.
• Work on a variety of experimental projects, rapidly iterating on new ideas and prototypes across different domains—from backend services to frontend experiences, infrastructure, and beyond.
• Develop new applications, frameworks, or tooling as needed to support our evolving product and business needs.
• Quickly evaluate and adopt new technologies, keeping us on the cutting edge while ensuring practical, high-impact applications for the business.
• Own end-to-end development for features and projects, from architectural decisions and backend services to frontend UI implementation and final deployment.
• Participate in weekly planning meetings, contributing to the backlog and collaborating closely with the Head of Product to clarify acceptance criteria, align expectations, and deliver high-quality work.
• Proactively drive innovation, sharing new ideas, frameworks, or approaches that could benefit the team and improve our engineering capabilities.

Who You’ll Be Working With

You’ll be joining a high-caliber team composed entirely of senior-level engineers, where excellence is the standard. This role is strictly for senior and staff-level talent—every team member operates at a high level of technical proficiency, ownership, and leadership. The team thrives on collaboration, expertise, and delivering impactful work, and we expect every member, including you, to be a key contributor. Seniority within our organization is determined solely by experience, qualifications, impact, and the ability to contribute to our team’s success.

Additional Desirable Experience

While not required, experience in the following areas is a plus:

• AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, Rig) and building AI-powered applications.
• Web3 and blockchain technologies, including Solidity/EVM, Rust, and related frameworks.