Job Description

As a Senior Software Engineer at Fanatics Betting & Gaming (FBG), you will play a senior technical role in building and evolving the client-facing service layers that power our Sportsbook and Casino experiences. These services sit between live sports data, internal platforms, and consumer applications, enabling fast, reliable, and personalized experiences for millions of fans.

In this role, you are a highly experienced individual contributor who leads the design and evolution of backend services and APIs from concept through production and long-term operation. You will drive architectural decisions, shape technical direction within the team, and collaborate cross-functionally with mobile engineers, product managers, and platform teams to deliver scalable backend-for-frontend (BFF) services supporting real-time user acquisition and retention experiences.

You bring deep expertise in service-oriented and distributed systems and are comfortable leading complex initiatives in ambiguous, high-impact problem spaces. You proactively identify system risks, drive performance and reliability improvements, and raise the bar for engineering quality. We value engineers who demonstrate strong technical leadership, ownership, and a commitment to operational excellence in real-time, high-traffic environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of consumer-facing backend services powering mobile Sportsbook and Casino experiences
• Architect and own backend-for-frontend (BFF) services that aggregate, transform, and optimize data for mobile clients
• Drive API design and service contracts in partnership with mobile engineers and product managers
• Translate complex product requirements into scalable, maintainable technical solutions
• Lead implementation of major backend initiatives from design through production readiness, including testing, observability, and operational planning
• Make and guide architectural decisions around data flow, service boundaries, resiliency, and performance optimization
• Improve system reliability, scalability, and latency for real-time betting and gameplay systems
• Participate in and help evolve the team’s on-call practices; lead root cause analysis and long-term reliability improvements
• Establish and promote best practices for observability, logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting
• Provide technical mentorship to other engineers through code reviews, design reviews, and knowledge sharing
• Contribute to technical roadmaps, quarterly planning, and cross-team architecture discussions
• Continuously deepen understanding of the business domain, including sports event hierarchies, betting workflows, and data quality considerations
• Foster a high-performing, inclusive engineering culture
• Be open to occasional travel to Fanatics offices or industry events for collaboration and team-building

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software development experience, primarily focused on backend or service-oriented systems
• Strong programming expertise with significant hands-on experience in Kotlin or Java
• Proven experience designing, building, and operating scalable backend services and RESTful APIs (ideally using Spring Boot, Spring Web, or similar frameworks)
• Deep understanding of microservices architecture, distributed systems patterns, and API design principles
• Experience leading technical design discussions and making architectural tradeoffs
• Strong experience with databases (SQL and/or NoSQL), data modeling, caching strategies, and performance tuning
• Demonstrated ownership of services from design through long-term production support
• Experience improving system reliability, scalability, and operational maturity in production environments
• Strong familiarity with monitoring, alerting, CI/CD pipelines, and incident response processes
• Ability to drive complex technical initiatives with minimal oversight
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to reason through ambiguous, high-impact challenges
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders in a remote-first environment

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing and operating large-scale distributed or event-driven systems
• Strong familiarity with Apache Kafka or similar messaging/streaming platforms
• Experience with Pekko (or Akka), reactive programming models, or asynchronous processing
• Experience building and scaling backend-for-frontend (BFF) architectures for mobile applications
• Experience in building backend services in Kotlin
• Knowledge of cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS and containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience optimizing systems for low latency, high throughput, and real-time data delivery
• Background working with data-intensive services, live feeds, or real-time processing pipelines
• Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to technical hiring processes
• Interest in sports, gaming, or highly interactive consumer products

Ready to build the future of sports betting? If you possess some of these qualifications but not all of them, we still encourage you to apply!

The expected salary range for this role is based on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This role is eligible for the Fanatics Betting and Gaming annual bonus program and an equity award. *Salary range is listed in USD: $138,240 - $207,360 per year (actual salary will be determined in part by a successful candidate’s geographic location). In addition to base salary, bonus, and equity, full-time employees are eligible for Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K, paid time off, and other benefits like GymPass, Pet Insurance, Family Care Benefits, and more. We’ll also give you $700 to set up your home office!

Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform. We ignite the passions of global sports fans and maximize the presence and reach for our hundreds of sports partners globally by offering products and services across Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming, allowing sports fans to Buy, Collect, and Bet. Through the Fanatics platform, sports fans can buy licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods; collect physical and digital trading cards, sports memorabilia, and other digital assets; and bet as the company builds its Sportsbook and iGaming platform. Fanatics has an established database of over 100 million global sports fans; a global partner network with approximately 900 sports properties, including major national and international professional sports leagues, players associations, teams, colleges, college conferences and retail partners, 2,500 athletes and celebrities, and 200 exclusive athletes; and over 2,000 retail locations, including its Lids retail stores. Our more than 22,000 employees are committed to relentlessly enhancing the fan experience and delighting sports fans globally.