Principal Java Engineer - Football Squad

Hawk-Eye Innovations (HEI); Basingstoke; Hybrid; GBP 74,000 - 99,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading sports technology company is seeking a Principal Java Engineer to join the Football Squad. You will manage data-intensive backend services that power live football events. The role requires expertise in Java and AWS, along with a passion for innovation. Benefits include flexible working, competitive salary, and exclusive perks. If you are driven and ready to tackle high-impact projects, we’d love to hear from you!

Benefits

25 days annual leave + 8 public holidays

Enhanced Pension Scheme: 5% matching

Access to sporting events and tickets

Wellness: Complimentary Unmind app, onsite gym

Qualifications

• Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and lead technical initiatives.
• Experience with designing and evolving microservices and complex distributed systems.
• Familiarity with observability tools like Datadog, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry.

Responsibilities

• Develop, optimise, and maintain backend services using Java (Spring Boot).
• Deploy and scale applications in AWS (ECS, Lambda, etc.).
• Collaborate with engineers, stakeholders to meet project deadlines.

Skills

Expert-level Java 17+

Strong experience with AWS

Proven ability to lead technical initiatives

Experience with event-driven architectures

Tools

Spring Boot

Datadog

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Principal Java Engineer – Football Squad

Salary Banding: £74,840 - £98,370 per annum
Contract: Full-Time, Permanent
Working Location: Hybrid, 2 Days a week in the office, minimum
Office Locations: Basingstoke, London, Bristol

Join Our Team as a Principal Java Engineer at Hawk-Eye Innovations

Hi, I’m Peter Laszlo, Backend Discipline Lead and hiring manager for this role. I’m excited to invite you to apply for the Principal Java Engineer position in our Football Squad at Hawk-Eye Innovations. If you're passionate about building scalable backend systems and want to work on high-impact projects for FIFA and UEFA, this could be the ideal role for you.

What Your Day Will Look Like

As a Principal Java Engineer in our Football Backend Team, you'll play a key role in designing, developing, and optimising data-intensive backend services that power live football events. Our team is responsible for managing data feeds, event-driven processing, and cloud-based infrastructure to deliver real-time insights to global football leagues and partners.

You’ll work in an agile environment, collaborating with engineers across our football backend team. Given the high-profile nature of our work, we operate in a fast-moving environment where efficiency and scalability are key to success.

What We Value

At Hawk-Eye, we believe in collaboration, ownership, and innovation. We strive to create an environment where engineers can contribute meaningfully, solve challenging problems, and improve their skills. Given the pace of work, we value engineers who can hit the ground running, take initiative, and contribute to mission‑critical projects from day one.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop, optimise, and maintain backend services using Java (Spring Boot)
• Contribute to design decisions for new and existing projects
• Work on football‑related data pipelines that power FIFA, Serie‑A and UEFA operations
• Deploy and scale applications in AWS (ECS, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, etc.)
• Enhance system observability, ensuring real‑time monitoring and logging using tools like Datadog
• Work on event‑driven architectures, leveraging message queues (Pulsar, Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, etc.)
• Collaborate with engineers, stakeholders and external partners to meet high‑impact project deadlines
• Ensure system reliability and performance in high‑traffic, real‑time environments

Tech Stack and Skill Requirements

Required:

• Expert‑level Java 17+ & Spring Boot
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and mentor senior engineers
• Strong experience with AWS (or other major cloud providers)
• Familiarity with observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry)
• Experience with designing and evolving microservices and complex distributed systems at scale
• Thorough understanding of monitoring, logging, and traceability
• Experience with event‑driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, etc.)
• Ability to bridge the gap between technical details and business requirements in a fast‑paced environment

Bonus Skills

• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code (GitHub Actions, Terraform)
• Familiarity with containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Exposure to real‑time data processing, low‑latency systems and sports tech

Reward, Benefits, and Wellness

• Annual Leave: 25 days + 8 public holidays
• Enhanced Pension Scheme: 5% matching
• Flexible Working: Hybrid model (2 days in the office per week)
• Wellness: Complimentary Unmind app, onsite gym (Basingstoke)
• Exclusive Perks: Access to sporting events and tickets, Sony Group Company discounts

Equal Opportunity Employer

Hawk‑Eye is committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. We ensure all employees are treated fairly, regardless of gender, marital status, race, nationality, religion, age, disability, or union membership status. We value diversity and strive to create an environment where everyone can reach their full potential.

Apply Today!

This is a fantastic opportunity to join Hawk‑Eye Innovations and make a significant impact in football technology. If you're looking for a role where you can solve real‑world problems at scale, we’d love to hear from you!