Director of Technology & Chief Architect

High 5 Games; Mahwah (NJ); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Holidays

Job summary

High 5 Games seeks a Director of Technology who will be a hands-on chief architect, shaping the cloud platform built on hundreds of Java microservices processing millions of real-time transactions daily. You’ll learn the existing system in 90 days, then own architecture domain by domain, leading the engineering teams to deliver scalable, secure, compliant gaming platforms.

You will define technology strategy, review code and ADRs, enforce engineering standards, and communicate trade-offs to

Qualifications

• 12+ years in software engineering, including 5+ years as an architect of large distributed systems.
• Expert-level Java (Java 17+), with Spring Boot / Spring Cloud, concurrency, and JVM performance tuning.
• Proven track record designing and operating a microservices estate of 100+ services in production.
• Hands-on experience with systems handling millions of real-time transactions per day, with measurable latency and uptime targets.
• Deep database expertise: relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle) including query tuning, indexing, sharding, and replication, plus NoSQL and caching (e.g., Cassandra, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis).
• Event-driven architecture with Kafka or a comparable streaming platform.
• Production experience on AWS or GCP, with Docker, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code (Terraform or similar).
• Strong grasp of distributed-systems fundamentals: consistency models, idempotency, partitioning, backpressure, and failure modes.
• Experience with API design (REST, gRPC), API gateways, and service mesh concepts.
• Observability and reliability practice: Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog or similar; SLOs and incident management.
• Experience leading and growing engineering teams, and evaluating and interviewing technical candidates.
• Clear communicator with executives, peers, and individual contributors.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of the microservices platform's architecture, domain by domain, through the first year, and then own it end to end: service boundaries, APIs, data ownership, and inter-service communication.
• Design for high-volume, low-latency, real-time transaction processing with strong consistency and idempotency guarantees.
• Define patterns for distributed transactions (sagas, outbox, event sourcing where appropriate), retries, and failure recovery.
• Lead architecture reviews and keep a living record of decisions (ADRs) across hundreds of services.
• Identify and pay down architectural debt; plan the evolution of legacy services without disrupting live traffic.

Skills

Java expert

Distributed systems

Executive communication

Performance tuning

Architectural leadership

Education

CS/Engineering degree

Tools

Kafka

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Datadog

Job description

The role

High 5 Games is hiring a Director of Technology who is first and foremost a hands-on chief architect. You will shape the technical vision and grow into owning the architecture of a cloud platform built on hundreds of Java microservices that process millions of real-time transactions every day. You will join a mature, high-volume platform that is already running in production. You'll spend your first 90 days learning it deeply, embedded with the teams that built it, and take ownership of its architecture domain by domain: starting with the data and transaction layer, then service architecture and the cloud platform. By the end of your first year, you'll own the platform's architecture end to end and set its direction for the years ahead. This is not a slide-deck architect role. You will design systems, review code and schemas, set engineering standards, and lead the engineering and technology teams that build and run the platform. You must be comfortable explaining technology strategy and trade-offs to executives, business partners, and regulators.

The platform you will own

• Hundreds of microservices, primarily Java, running in the cloud.
• Millions of real-time transactions per day, where latency, consistency, and auditability matter on every one.
• Regulated, money-adjacent workloads for social and sweepstakes casino gaming: wallets, purchases, game outcomes, and promotions.
• 24x7 availability for players across web and mobile.

Responsibilities

Architecture and system design

• Take ownership of the microservices platform's architecture, domain by domain, through the first year, and then own it end to end: service boundaries, APIs, data ownership, and inter-service communication.
• Design for high-volume, low-latency, real-time transaction processing with strong consistency and idempotency guarantees.
• Define patterns for distributed transactions (sagas, outbox, event sourcing where appropriate), retries, and failure recovery.
• Lead architecture reviews and keep a living record of decisions (ADRs) across hundreds of services.
• Identify and pay down architectural debt; plan the evolution of legacy services without disrupting live traffic.

Java and data platforms

• Set Java engineering standards: frameworks, libraries, build tooling, coding practices, and JVM tuning.
• Own the database strategy across relational, NoSQL, caching, and streaming platforms, including schema design, partitioning, replication, and capacity.
• Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks across the JVM, the network, and the data layer.

Cloud, reliability, and operations

• Guide the cloud architecture: containers, Kubernetes, managed data services, networking, and infrastructure as code.
• Set SLOs, observability standards (metrics, tracing, logging), and incident response practices.
• Drive scalability, resilience, disaster recovery, and cloud cost efficiency.
• Ensure security, data protection, and auditability meet gaming regulatory and payment requirements.

Leadership

• Build, lead, and mentor the engineering and technology teams; raise the bar on hiring.
• Translate business goals into a technology roadmap and project plans.
• Manage technical vendors and third-party platforms.
• Evaluate new technology and tools and bring in what moves the platform forward.
• Communicate technology strategy and risk clearly to the CEO, executives, and partners.

Required qualifications

• 12+ years in software engineering, including 5+ years as an architect of large distributed systems.
• Expert-level Java (Java 17+), with deep knowledge of Spring Boot / Spring Cloud, concurrency, and JVM performance tuning and garbage collection.
• Proven track record designing and operating a microservices estate of 100+ services in production.
• Hands-on experience with systems handling millions of real-time transactions per day, with measurable latency and uptime targets.
• Deep database expertise: relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle) including query tuning, indexing, sharding, and replication, plus NoSQL and caching (e.g., Cassandra, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Redis).
• Event-driven architecture with Kafka or a comparable streaming platform.
• Production experience on AWS or GCP, with Docker, Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code (Terraform or similar).
• Strong grasp of distributed-systems fundamentals: consistency models, idempotency, partitioning, backpressure, and failure modes.
• Experience with API design (REST, gRPC), API gateways, and service mesh concepts.
• Observability and reliability practice: Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog or similar; SLOs and incident management.
• Experience leading and growing engineering teams, and evaluating and interviewing technical candidates.
• Clear communicator with executives, peers, and individual contributors.

Preferred qualifications

• Background in gaming, iGaming, sweepstakes/social casino, sports betting, fintech, or payments.
• Experience with wallet, ledger, or payment systems where every transaction must reconcile.
• Familiarity with gaming regulatory, PCI DSS, or SOC 2 compliance requirements.
• Led a migration or re-platforming of a monolith or legacy services to microservices with no downtime.
• Experience with reactive or non-blocking Java (WebFlux, Vert.x, Netty) for high-throughput services.
• Cloud cost optimization (FinOps) at scale.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Compensation and benefits

The base salary range for this role is [TBD- Negotiable] per year, based on experience and skills.

Benefits include medical, dental and vision coverage; 401(k) and any match; paid time off and holidays; other programs.

About High 5 Games

High 5 Games is a leader in casino gaming entertainment, developing for land-based, online, mobile, and social markets. We have created hundreds of games played in 150 countries on six continents, and we are building the most entertaining social casino experience on web and mobile.

Our team includes mathematicians, software engineers, game designers, data scientists, and artists. It is a dynamic, multidisciplinary, high-learning environment. See us at high5games.com.

High 5 Games is an equal opportunity employer. As a US employer, we verify that all employees, regardless of citizenship or national origin, are eligible to work in the United States. Principals only; recruiters, please don't contact us.