Staff Engineer Software

Fanatics Inc.; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Fanatics Betting & Gaming in Leeds seeks a Staff Software Engineer to build high-throughput backend systems that process market data and power live sportsbook experiences. You will lead through code, architecture, and technical decisions, collaborating with teams in the US and UK to ingest, enrich, and reliably deliver market feeds at scale.

The role emphasizes reliability, low latency, and scalability, with mentorship of engineers, on-call incident response, and driving best practices across

Qualifications

• 7 years of experience building highly scalable backend distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Java and Spring framework.
• Experience with observability: logging, monitoring, tracing.
• Strong Agile software delivery capabilities.
• Excellent communication across diverse audiences.
• Mentorship and leadership within engineering teams.

Responsibilities

• Drive development, testing, documentation, and deployment of reliable software into production.
• Shape team strategy and influence architectural direction.
• Lead end-to-end technical execution of complex features and systems.
• Align designs across the department and collaborate with product and design teams.
• Lead incident resolution and on-call duties when needed.
• Mentor engineers and promote best practices and robust design patterns.

Job description

As a Staff Software Engineer within Fanatics Betting & Gaming’s Sportsbook domain, you’ll play a key hands-on role in building and evolving backend systems that process high-volume market data, apply complex business rules, and distribute updates in real time to downstream services. This is a high-throughput, low-latency area of the platform where correctness, resilience, and performance are critical, especially during live sporting events.

You’ll operate as a senior individual contributor, leading through code, architecture, and technical decision-making, while partnering closely with engineers and product teams across the US and UK to ensure market feeds from external providers are ingested, enriched, and reliably delivered at scale to power live customer experiences.

In addition to hands-on technical contributions, you'll provide technical mentorship, guide architectural decisions, and analyze complex system challenges to ensure robust and efficient solutions. You'll collaborate across teams, influencing best practices and leading key projects that enhance the sportsbook experience within the broader Fanatics ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Drive the development, testing, documentation, and deployment of high-quality, stable, scalable software into production
• Develop a comprehensive understanding of the industry, product, and roadmap, leveraging this knowledge to shape team strategy and influence the direction of the organization
• Lead the end-to-end technical execution of complex features and systems, from ideation and architecture to deployment and refinement
• Align and streamline designs across your department, promoting clarity and simplicity in technical direction while upholding organizational goals.
• Partner closely with product, design, and other stakeholders to make high-impact technical decisions that align with both business goals and long-term scalability
• Lead incident resolution as part of the on-call rotation, ensuring swift diagnosis and remediation of critical software issues
• Proactively identify and remove roadblocks, occasionally collaborating cross-team collaboration to maintain momentum on complex projects
• Conduct and elevate code reviews, sharing expertise to enhance code quality
• Steer team planning and design discussions, introducing innovative approaches to solve technical challenges and optimize design patterns
• Champion improvements to software quality, testability, operational metrics, and team documentation, setting a higher standard for the organization
• Mentor and coach engineers at all levels, fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional growth across the team
• Be open to occasional travel to Fanatics offices and other locations for conferences, events, meetings, and team-building activities

Required Qualifications

• 7 years of experience building highly scalable, performant and evolvable backend distributed systems; proficiency in Spring and Java is a must.
• Demonstrated ability to drive best practices in backend development and mentor others in effective coding and architectural strategies, such as clean code, domain driven design and other design and architectural patterns
• Knowledge of observability practices, including logging, monitoring, and tracing in distributed systems.
• Expertise in Agile software delivery, with a track record of modeling and driving process improvements across teams, and ability to collaborate cross-functionally across diverse teams within large enterprise environments, driving alignment and shared success.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of conveying complex technical concepts clearly and effectively to diverse audiences, including engineers, executives, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Adaptable mindset, comfortable with shifting priorities and new initiatives in a fast-paced, evolving organization.
• Team-first mentality, with a willingness to do what it takes to get the job done and a desire to strive for better.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong Experience in the sports industry, gaming and content delivery
• Highly effective with Java, Spring boot, React.
• Expertise in messaging technologies such as Kafka with a solid understanding of event-driven architectures.
• Comfortable working with Cloud Native and Infrastructure as Code, like Kubernetes, Helm and Terraform
• Ability to work in diverse codebases, both legacy and greenfield, in different languages and environments
• Background in startups or high-growth environments.

You NEED to be Living in the UK to Apply. Unfortunately, we do not offer sponsorship for this role.