Staff Engineer - Backend/Java (REMOTE)

fanaticsfbg; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work

Occasional travel

Job summary

Fanatics is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to lead the design and delivery of scalable distributed services that power digital products and customer experiences. You will balance hands-on delivery with technical direction, guiding teams from early design through production and ensuring durable architecture.

You will set engineering practices, mentor engineers, and collaborate with product, design, and other teams to resolve cross-team dependencies and on-call incidents in a fast-paced

Qualifications

• At least 7 years building scalable, performant, evolvable distributed backend systems.
• Experience with sound backend design practices, such as clean code, layered or hexagonal architecture, and domain-driven design; Spring, Java, or Kotlin experience is relevant.
• Understanding of observability for distributed systems, including logging, monitoring, and tracing.
• Experience improving Agile delivery and coordinating work across teams in a large organization.
• Clear communication with technical and nontechnical stakeholders, plus a collaborative approach to mentoring and problem solving.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and end-to-end delivery of complex backend features, including development, testing, documentation, deployment, and follow-up improvements.
• Shape team and technical strategy by connecting product goals and roadmap needs to scalable engineering decisions.
• Set engineering practices for design, code quality, testability, observability, and operational documentation.
• Work with product, design, and engineering partners to resolve cross-team dependencies and remove delivery obstacles.
• Participate in on-call response, diagnose production incidents, and guide timely remediation.
• Review designs and code, lead technical discussions, and mentor engineers across experience levels.

Skills

Backend architecture

Clean code

Distributed systems

Domain-driven design

Java

Kotlin

Spring

Observability

Agile delivery

Mentoring

Communication

Tools

Kubernetes

Helm

Terraform

Kafka

Amazon SQS

Job description

Role overview

Lead backend engineering for shared services that support digital products and customer experiences. This staff-level role combines hands-on delivery with technical direction, taking complex systems from early design through production and helping teams balance near-term needs with durable architecture.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and end-to-end delivery of complex backend features, including development, testing, documentation, deployment, and follow-up improvements.
• Shape team and technical strategy by connecting product goals and roadmap needs to scalable engineering decisions.
• Set engineering practices for design, code quality, testability, observability, and operational documentation.
• Work with product, design, and engineering partners to resolve cross-team dependencies and remove delivery obstacles.
• Participate in on-call response, diagnose production incidents, and guide timely remediation.
• Review designs and code, lead technical discussions, and mentor engineers across experience levels.

Requirements

• At least 7 years building scalable, performant, evolvable distributed backend systems.
• Experience with sound backend design practices, such as clean code, layered or hexagonal architecture, and domain-driven design; Spring, Java, or Kotlin experience is relevant.
• Understanding of observability for distributed systems, including logging, monitoring, and tracing.
• Experience improving Agile delivery and coordinating work across teams in a large organization.
• Clear communication with technical and nontechnical stakeholders, plus a collaborative approach to mentoring and problem solving.
• Comfort working in a fast-changing environment where priorities and decisions can shift.

Nice to have

• Experience in sports, gaming, or content delivery.
• Proficiency with Kotlin, Java, or Go; messaging systems such as Kafka or Amazon SQS; and event-driven design.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, or other cloud-native and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Experience moving between established and new codebases.

Benefits and work setup

The role is listed as remote. Occasional travel for meetings, events, conferences, or team activities may be required. The source mentions full-time employment and benefits, but does not provide specific benefit details.