Staff Software Engineer (Java, Backend)

Overview

JOB DESCRIPTION

As a Staff Software Engineer at Fanatics Betting & Gaming (FBG), you are a recognized technical leader who thrives on architecting and delivering scalable, high-performance systems. You operate at both strategic and hands-on levels—leading complex initiatives, designing robust APIs, and driving backend architecture decisions that power seamless, low-latency user experiences. Your bold technical decisions thoughtfully balance near-term impact with long-term maintainability and platform health. Through your leadership, you foster a culture of innovation, shared ownership, and engineering excellence across teams, elevating both the backend and full-stack capabilities of the organization.

We own the iCasino experience across Fanatics platforms—including the Standalone Casino App, iCasino within our Fanatics Sportsbook & Casino App, and the Casino Desktop website. These experiences are powered by modern technologies including Kotlin Multiplatform, Spring Boot, Java, and React. Our ambition is to build the top online casino in the U.S.—with products that are fun, dynamic, and entertainment-first. We move fast, embrace modern development principles, and prioritize scalable architecture to continuously deliver on our Customer Promise and stay ahead in this exciting, fast-paced market.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end technical execution of complex backend (and some full-stack) features—from architecture and API design to development, testing, deployment, and post-launch refinement.
• Design and implement scalable, low-latency distributed systems that power engaging iCasino experiences across web and mobile applications.
• Drive the architecture and evolution of shared backend services and platform infrastructure, ensuring strong API contracts, reusable business logic, and high system performance.
• Collaborate with mobile and KMP engineers to shape backend capabilities that support consistent experiences across Android, iOS, and desktop.
• Partner closely with Product, Design, and Frontend teams to build intuitive and delightful user journeys with thoughtful backend integration.
• Define and uphold engineering best practices and coding standards across Java, Spring Boot, and React stacks—raising the bar for quality and maintainability.
• Contribute to and lead technical strategy, design discussions, architecture reviews, and sprint planning to inform decisions and drive scalable outcomes.
• Champion operational excellence by improving observability, performance, testability, and reliability across systems and services.
• Lead incident response efforts as part of the on-call rotation, ensuring swift resolution and learnings from production issues.
• Conduct and elevate code reviews, encouraging consistent practices and knowledge sharing across engineering teams.
• Proactively identify and remove technical, organizational, or cross-team roadblocks to maintain momentum on high-impact initiatives.
• Mentor and coach engineers across backend and full-stack domains, fostering a growth-oriented, collaborative engineering culture.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and industry trends in distributed systems, backend frameworks, and full-stack engineering.
• Be open to occasional travel to Fanatics offices or industry events for team planning, collaboration, and relationship-building.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on backend development using Java and Spring Boot in high-scale, low-latency environments.
• Proven ability to design and build fault-tolerant distributed systems with strong API boundaries and clean architectural patterns.
• Exposure to modern frontend frameworks (React preferred) and a strong appreciation for full-stack collaboration—even if your expertise is primarily backend.
• Deep understanding of RESTful service design, event-driven architecture, and database technologies (SQL and NoSQL).
• Ability to triage and resolve complex system-wide issues, balancing short-term fixes with long-term solutions.
• Strong knowledge of software design principles and tradeoffs across performance, scalability, and maintainability.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers, driving technical alignment, and fostering growth within a team.
• Clear, effective communicator—capable of translating deep technical concepts for engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders alike.
• Experience working in Agile/SCRUM environments, with a proven track record of shipping features and iterating quickly.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, evolving product space, with a bias for action and continuous improvement.
• Team-first mentality, with a collaborative mindset and a passion for building outstanding customer experiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing scalable backend systems in AWS or other cloud environments, with exposure to infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and observability tooling (e.g., Datadog, Grafana).
• Exposure to Kotlin Multiplatform and a curiosity about how shared business logic can drive consistency across mobile and web.
• Hands-on React experience—or a strong desire to learn—as part of a modern full-stack development toolkit.
• Comfort working in start-up or hyper-growth environments, with a pragmatic approach to MVPs, iteration, and product discovery.
• A passion for developer experience, platform architecture, and API design, with an eye toward building elegant systems that scale.
• Previous experience leading technical initiatives, facilitating cross-team collaboration, or helping establish engineering best practice
• Kubernetes experience, orchestrating containerized services, setting up, scaling, & maintaining clusters; managing deployments
• Kafka experience, designing, implementing event-driven architecture, real-time data pipelines for distributed systems (our team isn't using this currently, but I believe ICP team is moving towards this, would be beneficial)
• Terraform experience, managing infrastructure as code, setting up cloud resources, networking, automated deployments, etc

_Ready to build the future of sports betting? If you possess some of these skills 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; actual salary will vary based on location. *Salary Range: $144,000 - $282,000 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!

About Us

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.

About The Team

Launched in 2021, Fanatics Betting and Gaming is the online and retail sports betting subsidiary of Fanatics Holdings Inc., a global digital sports platform. The Fanatics Sportsbook is available to nearly 93% of the addressable online sports bettor market in the U.S. in the following states: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. Fanatics Casino is currently available online in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Fanatics Betting and Gaming operates nineteen retail locations including retail sportsbooks outside of Progressive Field and Nationwide Arena and the only sportsbook inside an NFL stadium at Commanders Field. Fanatics Betting and Gaming is headquartered in New York with offices in Denver and Dublin, Ireland.