Staff Software Engineer - FMX

Fanatics Inc.; New York (NY); Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Home office stipend

Remote work in UK

Job summary

Fanatics Markets is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to define the technical direction of our platform underpinning exchange and trading systems. You will lead architecture, tooling, and infrastructure to enable low-latency, highly available services while mentoring engineers across teams.

You will work hands-on with Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform and CI/CD, balancing performance, security and cost. The role combines coding and infrastructure leadership within a fast-growing, high-growth startup

Qualifications

• Significant backend/platform engineering experience delivering production software and cloud-native environments.
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Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of software tools, services and automation for infrastructure, reliability and developer experience.
• Define and evolve cloud-native architecture balancing performance, reliability, security and cost.
• Set direction for CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling while remaining hands-on.
• Develop load-testing environments, mock services, and integrations.
• Establish AI-augmented development standards and validation practices.
• Identify AI-generated code risks and improve quality and security.
• Shape platform security safeguards and compliance standards.
• Lead observability improvements: monitoring, tracing, alerts, automated recovery.
• Collaborate with product and engineering leads to scale platform solutions.
• Mentor engineers, lead design discussions and raise engineering standards across teams.
• Participate in on-call rotation and drive incident prevention improvements.

Skills

Software architecture

Backend engineering

Kubernetes

AWS

Terraform

Java

Python

Go

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Observability

AI-assisted development

Code review & mentoring

Technical leadership

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

AWS

Prometheus

Grafana

Datadog

Claude Code

Cursor

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Fanatics Markets is the real-money prediction and trading app where you can invest in moments you care about. Built on a secure platform, we let users predict real-world outcomes and trade on events they actually follow—from sports and entertainment to political elections and beyond. Our mission is to redefine how fans engage with the moments and markets that matter most. We're looking for the right people to help us build the future of prediction markets.

Role Overview

As a Staff Software Engineer within our Platform team, you will help define the technical direction of the platform underpinning our exchange and trading systems. You will lead the design and evolution of our infrastructure and platform standards to support a highly available, low-latency exchange, partnering closely with exchange engineers and engineering leads to enable rapid innovation without compromising stability or security.

This role requires a balance of deep hands-on software engineering, systems thinking and technical leadership. You will lead complex projects that support the exchange—from load-testing environments and mock integrations to monitoring and automated recovery. You will turn ambiguous requirements into practical designs, own delivery from ideation to production and help operate the platform as the exchange goes live. The balance of coding and infrastructure work varies by project, but you should be comfortable independently developing new software as well as improving existing systems, setting platform standards and mentoring engineers across experience levels.

On the engineering side, we are pioneering the use of AI as a code collaborator. We need engineers who have moved beyond experimentation - who actively use tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot to ship production code faster while maintaining exceptional quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of software tools, services and automation that solve complex infrastructure, reliability and developer experience challenges.
• Define and evolve the architecture of highly available cloud-native infrastructure, balancing performance, reliability, security and cost as the platform grows.
• Set technical direction for CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling, remaining hands-on in delivering improvements to the software delivery lifecycle.
• Lead the development of load-testing environments and supporting software, including mock services and integrations.
• Establish and evolve standards for AI-augmented development, using effective prompting and validation practices to increase velocity without sacrificing code quality.
• Identify and mitigate AI-generated code pitfalls, such as security vulnerabilities or over-abstraction, and help teams evaluate the impact on quality and productivity.
• Guide the design and implementation of platform security safeguards and compliance standards to protect the integrity of the firm's systems.
• Shape the system observability roadmap and lead improvements to monitoring, tracing, alerting and automated recovery.
• Partner with exchange, product and engineering leads to resolve architectural trade-offs, align priorities and deliver scalable platform solutions.
• Mentor engineers across experience levels, lead technical design discussions and raise engineering standards across teams.
• Participate in the on-call rotation, lead incident response for team-owned services and drive engineering improvements that prevent recurring incidents.

Skills

• Significant experience in software, backend or platform engineering, with a track record of leading complex technical projects and delivering production software and scalable, cloud-native environments.
• Deep software development expertise, including the ability to independently design, build, test and deploy services or substantial tools from scratch and guide others through complex implementation decisions.
• Deep hands-on Kubernetes experience, including designing and operating production environments, troubleshooting complex failures, and establishing patterns for high availability and efficient scaling.
• Strong hands-on experience with AWS and infrastructure as code using Terraform, including making architectural decisions across complex environments.
• High proficiency in Java and Python; Go is a plus. You should be comfortable bridging the gap between infrastructure and application logic.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and the ability to make and explain trade-offs between low latency, high availability, scalability and operational complexity.
• Experience shaping CI/CD and observability approaches, with hands-on knowledge of tools such as Prometheus, Grafana or Datadog.
• Strong proficiency in using AI collaborators such as Claude Code, Cursor or GitHub Copilot to ship production code and improve engineering workflows.
• Ability to evaluate AI-generated code for security gaps or architectural errors and establish rigorous testing and validation practices.
• Proven ability to turn ambiguous problems into a clear technical direction and deliver improvements across team boundaries, balancing immediate needs with long-term architectural health.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical decisions, influence without formal authority and collaborate effectively with distributed engineering and product teams.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and building alignment around technical standards and architectural decisions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in high-growth startup environments.
• Experience with financial systems, exchanges, real-money transactions or regulatory compliance.
• Background in designing and building internal developer platforms, tools, CLI applications or infrastructure automation services.
• Experience developing load-testing environments, mock services or automated recovery systems.
• Experience leading technical initiatives spanning multiple teams or evolving platform architecture through significant growth or change.

Depending on the role, your interview and onboarding experience may include in-person components, such as onsite interviews or Launching into Better: LIVE-a multi-day cultural immersion in New York City for full-time, non-seasonal hires. These sessions are designed to build connection and bring our culture to life, though specific travel and participation requirements will be confirmed based on your role and location. Your recruiter will provide clear guidance at each stage of the process.

Please note that visa sponsorship is not available for this position. We are open to fully remote candidates based in the United Kingdom. Remote employees may also be eligible for a home office setup stipend.