Staff Backend Engineer: Java/Kotlin, Scale & Leadership

Fanatics Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 170,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Fanatics Inc. is seeking an experienced Backend Staff Engineer to lead strategic and hands-on backend work for Fanatics Core. You will steer architecture, drive best practices, and mentor teams while delivering scalable systems for a growing digital sports platform.

You will collaborate across product, design, and other stakeholders to align technical decisions with business goals, while shaping the engineering culture and ensuring high-quality, observable software in production.

Qualifications

• 7+ years building scalable backend distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Spring with Kotlin and/or Java is a plus.
• Knowledge of observability practices: logging, monitoring, tracing.
• Expertise in Agile software delivery with cross-team collaboration.
• Excellent communication skills for diverse audiences.
• Team-first mentality and willingness to take on challenges.
• Thrives in a high-growth environment with evolving priorities.

Responsibilities

• Drive development, testing, documentation, and deployment of high-quality scalable software into production.
• Develop understanding of the product and roadmap to shape team strategy and align with goals.
• Lead end-to-end technical execution of complex features and systems from ideation to deployment.
• Define and enforce engineering principles, guidelines, and best practices.
• Collaborate with product, design, and stakeholders on high-impact technical decisions.
• Lead incident resolution as part of on-call rotation and ensure rapid remediation.
• Identify and remove roadblocks; collaborate cross-team to maintain momentum.
• Conduct and elevate code reviews to improve quality.
• Steer planning and design discussions, introducing innovative design approaches.
• Champion improvements to software quality, testability, metrics, and docs.
• Mentor engineers at all levels to foster growth and learning.
• Be open to occasional travel to Fanatics offices for events and meetings.

Skills

Spring with Kotlin/Java

Backend design & architecture

Observability practices

Agile software delivery

Effective communication

Mentoring others

Team-first mindset

High-growth environments

Tools

Kafka

Amazon SQS

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

Fanatics Inc. is seeking an experienced Backend Staff Engineer to lead strategic and hands-on backend work for Fanatics Core. You will steer architecture, drive best practices, and mentor teams while delivering scalable systems for a growing digital sports platform.

You will collaborate across product, design, and other stakeholders to align technical decisions with business goals, while shaping the engineering culture and ensuring high-quality, observable software in production.