Senior Software Engineer (Gamification)

PrizePicks; United States; Remote; USD 175,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental & vision plans

401(k) plan with company match

Annual bonus

Flexible PTO

Parental leave and disability benefits

Company equipment (Windows & Mac)

Job summary

PrizePicks is seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Ruby on Rails) to join the Gamification team. You will design, build, and own Rails-based backend services powering our platform, including customer rewards and loyalty programs.

You will mentor engineers, shape technical direction, and tackle high-scope backend problems affecting millions of users. You’ll work on real-time contest engines, scale backend systems, and collaborate with product, design, and QA to translate goals into scalable

Qualifications

• 5–8 years of professional software engineering experience with production Ruby on Rails applications.
• Proven track record of owning and delivering complex, multi-component features in a team.
• Experience designing and operating backend systems that handle significant scale and complexity.
• Familiarity with large-scale, high-throughput distributed systems and event-driven architecture.
• Experience working in a fully remote engineering organization.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend Rails-based services that are performant, scalable, and reliable.
• Lead technical design and end-to-end delivery of complex features from product to production.
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks and optimize database queries for resilience.
• Propose and drive architectural decisions for team services and communicate tradeoffs.
• Provide hands-on mentorship through code reviews, pairing, and guidance.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

Backend design

Distributed systems

Mentoring

Communication

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Go

PostgreSQL

REST APIs

Job description

At PrizePicks, we are the fastest-growing sports company in North America, as recognized by Inc. 5000. As the leading platform for Daily Fantasy Sports, we cover a diverse range of sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA, and Esports titles like League of Legends and Counter-Strike. Our team of over 550 employees thrives in an inclusive culture that values individuals from diverse backgrounds, regardless of their level of sports fandom. Ready to reimagine the DFS industry together?

Senior Software Engineer (Ruby on Rails)

At PrizePicks, we are the fastest-growing sports company in North America, as recognized by Inc.5000. As the leading platform for Daily Fantasy Sports, we cover a diverse range of sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA, and Esports titles like League of Legends and Counter-Strike. Our team of over 450 employees thrives in an inclusive culture that values individuals from diverse backgrounds, regardless of their level of sports fandom. Ready to reimagine the DFS industry together?

Overview

At PrizePicks, we are changing the game in daily fantasy sports. We are a passionate team of innovators dedicated to creating a best-in-class experience for our members. Our engineering team builds and scales the platform that powers our explosive growth — from real-time contest engines to the services that handle millions of daily transactions. We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Gamification team and help us continue to build the future of fantasy sports.

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer with deep expertise in Ruby on Rails to join our Gamification team. In this role, you will design, build, and own critical Rails-based backend services that power PrizePicks’ core platform — including customer rewards, incentives and our loyalty program. You will tackle high-scope, complex technical problems, define the technical path from product idea to production, and mentor engineers across your team and the organization. This is a role for someone who thrives on solving hard backend problems and wants to have a direct impact on a product used by millions.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build backend services : Architect and implement Rails-based services that are performant, scalable, and reliable, supporting high-throughput workloads and complex business logic.
• Own technical delivery : Lead the technical design and implementation of complex features end-to-end — from product requirements through deployment and monitoring.
• Drive system reliability : Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks, optimize database queries, and improve the resilience of backend systems under load.
• Define technical direction : Propose and drive architectural decisions for your team’s services, evaluating tradeoffs and communicating recommendations clearly.
• Mentor and elevate : Provide hands‑on mentorship to Software Engineers I, II, and III on your team and in the organization through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance.
• Improve engineering practices : Define, advocate for, and improve best practices around code quality, testing, observability, and deployment for your team.
• Collaborate cross-functionally : Work closely with Product Managers, Designers, QA, and other engineering teams to translate product goals into well‑scoped technical solutions.
• Participate in on‑call rotation : Share responsibility for production incidents, contributing to root cause analysis and long‑term reliability improvements.

What You Have

Experience:

• 5–8 years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time building production Ruby on Rails applications
• Proven track record of owning and delivering complex, multi‑component features in a team environment
• Experience designing and operating backend systems that handle significant scale and complexity
• High level of familiarity with the challenges of large‑scale, high‑throughput distributed systems and event‑driven architecture

Technical Skills:

• Expert‑level Ruby on Rails proficiency — you understand the framework deeply, write idiomatic Ruby, and know when to leverage or work around Rails conventions
• Strong proficiency with PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning at scale
• Solid understanding of API design — RESTful services, serialization strategies, and versioning
• Experience with background job processing (Sidekiq or similar) and asynchronous workflows
• Experience with containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
• Understanding of observability practices — logging, metrics, tracing
• Working knowledge of Go — our backend includes significant Go services, and cross‑stack capability is valued at this level

Working Style:

• Comfortable working autonomously with minimal direction on ambiguous problems
• Effective communicator who can articulate technical decisions to both engineers and non‑technical stakeholders
• Experience working in a fully remote engineering organization
• Able to context‑switch between deep technical work and collaborative planning

What Makes You Stand Out

• Experience leveraging AI‑assisted development tools across the development lifecycle — coding, planning, scoping, and code review
• Experience integrating AI tooling into engineering workflows to accelerate team productivity
• Experience in bringing greenfield services from 0 to production
• Experience with event streaming (Kafka, Pulsar, NATS or similar)
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (Ansible, Helm, Terraform)

Where You’ll Live

While we prefer candidates based in Atlanta, we are open to qualified applicants from anywhere in the U.S. and are willing to consider remote candidates. #LI-Remote

Working at PrizePicks

The typical salary range for this position is $175,000 to $185,000. At PrizePicks, we consider your role, level, and where you’ll be working when determining our salary ranges. The compensation info you see on our job postings gives you an idea of the starting pay range for the position. Your actual pay within that range will depend on your specific work location, as well as your skills, experience, and education. Your recruiter will be happy to chat more about the specific pay range for your location and how we arrived at it during the hiring process.

This application period will remain open for 30 days. We’re committed to finding the best candidate, so this date may be adjusted, and any changes will be reflected in this posting.

Benefits you’ll receive:

In addition to your great compensation package, full‑time employees will be eligible for the following perks:

• Company‑subsidized medical, dental, & vision plans
• 401(k) plan with company match
• Annual bonus
• Flexible PTO to encourage a healthy work/life balance (2 weeks STRONGLY encouraged!)
• Generous paid leave programs, including 16‑week paid parental leave and disability benefits
• Workplace flexibility and modern work schedules focused on getting the job done, not hours clocked
• Company-wide in‑person events and team outings
• Lifestyle enhancement program
• Company equipment provided (Windows & Mac options)
• Annual performance reviews with opportunities for growth and career development

You must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.

PrizePicks is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.