Backend Team Lead

We’re looking for a Backend Team Lead who can both architect and lead—someone who thrives in high-scale, fast-paced environments and wants to shape the systems, people, and processes behind a product used by millions in real time.

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What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead a team of backend engineers through planning, design, development, and delivery of core systems and APIs.

• Architect and develop scalable, high-performance backend systems with real-time data and low-latency requirements.

• Own and evolve core microservices, APIs, and data infrastructure that power live sports events and odds engines.

• Collaborate with product managers, data analysts, and other engineering teams to translate vision into executable architecture.

• Conduct code reviews, mentor team members, and establish engineering best practices for reliability, scalability, and performance.

• Champion clean architecture, maintainable codebases, and a culture of quality and ownership.

• Troubleshoot complex, production-scale issues during high-traffic events like playoffs and major tournaments.

• Contribute to the growth of the engineering organization by improving processes, onboarding, and long-term technical direction.

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What You Bring

• 5+ years of experience building and maintaining large-scale backend systems in production environments.

• 2+ years of experience leading backend or full-stack teams in an agile environment.

• A proactive, ownership-driven mindset with accountability for both delivery and team culture.

• Ability to plan, prioritize, and delegate effectively while still being hands-on when necessary.

• Proven ability to manage and mentor engineers, fostering growth through feedback, pairing, and career development.

• Experience driving architecture decisions, establishing coding standards, and aligning team efforts with business goals.

• Track record of balancing delivery speed and technical quality, ensuring scalable and maintainable systems.

• Strong organizational and communication skills to coordinate cross-team initiatives and communicate technical concepts clearly.

• Deep knowledge of message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar) and event-driven architectures.

• Solid understanding of relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and practical data modeling.

• Experience designing and operating distributed systems with high concurrency and reliability requirements.

• Comfortable leveraging AI-assisted development tools to accelerate delivery and enhance quality.

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Bonus Points

• Strong proficiency in Kotlin, Java, or C#, especially in performance optimization and async patterns.

• Experience with Redis (caching, pub/sub, distributed locks).

• Hands-on experience with AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS, etc.) or other cloud-native platforms.

• Background in high-scale, real-time systems handling millions of requests per day.