Senior Backend Engineer - Lead Scalable Systems (Kotlin/Java)

Fanatics Inc.; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 144,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Fanatics Inc. is seeking a Backend Staff Engineer for Fanatics Core. You will lead the development of scalable backend systems and drive end-to-end technical execution from ideation to production.

Expect close collaboration with product, design, and other stakeholders to align technical decisions with business goals. You will mentor engineers, improve engineering practices, and participate in on-call rotations, with occasional travel to Fanatics offices and events.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience building highly scalable backend distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Spring with Kotlin and/or Java is a plus.
• Experience driving best practices and mentoring others in backend development and architecture.
• Knowledge of observability practices (logging/monitoring/tracing).
• Expertise in Agile delivery with cross-team collaboration.
• Strong communication skills for engineers, executives, and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Drive development, testing, documentation, and deployment of scalable software into production.
• Shape team strategy by developing understanding of industry, product, and roadmap.
• Lead end-to-end technical execution of complex features from ideation to deployment.
• Define engineering principles, guidelines, and best practices.
• Collaborate with product/design to align technical decisions with business goals.
• Lead incident resolution and participate in on-call rotations; remove roadblocks.

Skills

Backend systems

Kotlin/Java

Distributed systems

Mentoring

Observability

Agile

Communication

Leadership

Tools

Kafka

Amazon SQS

Kubernetes

Helm

Terraform

Go

Job description

Fanatics Inc. is seeking a Backend Staff Engineer for Fanatics Core. You will lead the development of scalable backend systems and drive end-to-end technical execution from ideation to production.

Expect close collaboration with product, design, and other stakeholders to align technical decisions with business goals. You will mentor engineers, improve engineering practices, and participate in on-call rotations, with occasional travel to Fanatics offices and events.