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Staff Blockchain Engineer - Backend

London, England, United Kingdom

About Us

Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform. We ignite the passions of global sports fans and maximize the presence and reach for our hundreds of sports partners globally by offering products and services across Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming, allowing sports fans to Buy, Collect, and Bet. Through the Fanatics platform, sports fans can buy licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods; collect physical and digital trading cards, sports memorabilia, and other digital assets; and bet as the company builds its Sportsbook and iGaming platform. Fanatics has an established database of over 100 million global sports fans; a global partner network with approximately 900 sports properties, including major national and international professional sports leagues, players associations, teams, colleges, college conferences and retail partners, 2,500 athletes and celebrities, and 200 exclusive athletes; and over 2,000 retail locations, including its Lids retail stores. Our more than 22,000 employees are committed to relentlessly enhancing the fan experience and delighting sports fans globally. 

About Fanatics Markets:

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.1

Overview:

This Staff Software Engineer (Backend) role is a high-impact IC responsible for setting the technical vision and architectural direction for our core markets and trading platform. You’ll join a true 0→1 team, driving the technical strategy, defining long-term system architecture, and establishing the engineering standards for the entire backend organization. You will be responsible for architecting and scaling systems that can handle millions of events daily and ensuring the platform's reliability, correctness, and auditability. On the engineering side, we're pioneering the use of AI as a code collaborator. We need engineers who will define the organizational strategy for AI-assisted development, driving adoption of tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, or similar across multiple teams to ensure exceptional quality and maximum development velocity.1

Responsibilities:

  • Define and own the long-term technical strategy and architecture for our mission-critical backend services in Go
  • Drive cross-organizational alignment and technical strategy for our markets and trading platform, partnering closely with product and engineering teams to deliver robust, observable, and maintainable systems
  • Define the technical scope and success metrics for major, multi-quarter initiatives. Serve as the technical lead for critical backend projects, ensuring successful end-to-end delivery.1
  • Architect and scale our experimentation capabilities (feature flags, A/B tests) to support rapid, high-volume testing across critical trading and markets services.
  • Own and drive the architectural vision for data modeling and management (markets, orders, transactions), ensuring absolute correctness, integrity, and regulatory auditability across all data stores.
  • Define the architecture for reliable and fault-tolerant ingestion pipelines, integrating on-chain and off-chain data sources for blockchain event processing and real-time querying.
  • Elevate and own the production reliability strategy, including defining high-level SLOs, establishing best practices for monitoring/alerting, and leading the incident response process for core platform services.
  • Elevate engineering excellence by conducting rigorous code and architectural design reviews, and proactively setting technical standards across the team and adjacent backend domains.
  • Define and evangelize the company-wide strategy and tooling for AI-assisted software development, ensuring best-in-class security, correctness, and performance for backend systems.
  • Act as a technical multiplier in a fast-paced 0→1 environment, actively unblocking complex cross-functional challenges, and driving initiatives to improve team efficiency and scalability.

Qualifications:

  • 8+ years experience building highly scalable, high-performance backend applications or distributed systems.
  • Deep expertise and architectural experience building blockchain dApps or services integrating with EVM or Solana (ideally production experience).
  • Expertise in architectural patterns for querying, indexing, and reconciling blockchain data at scale.
  • Deep, recognized expertise in PostgreSQL, including advanced optimization, complex data modeling, and transaction integrity for financial systems.
  • Proven track record of designing, deploying, and owning mission-critical event-driven architectures (Kafka, PubSub, or similar) at high volume.
  • Serve as the domain expert on distributed systems design, setting and enforcing organizational standards for software design principles (e.g., SOLID, DRY) and testing methodologies.
  • Expertise in API design and architectural governance, driving integration strategy across internal and external partners.
  • Expertise in defining and optimizing CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and safe deployment practices for large-scale backend services.
  • Proven track record of owning and delivering platform-wide performance and reliability improvements.
  • Demonstrated expertise in leveraging AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.) to drive organizational productivity improvements. Can articulate and quantify the strategic impact of AI tooling on the development lifecycle.
  • Exceptional ability to communicate, influence, and align technical vision across diverse audiences, including executive leadership, product, and engineering teams.
  • Demonstrated success in driving alignment on complex, multi-team backend projects within large enterprise environments.
  • Thrives in a high-growth environment where priorities evolve regularly and decisions are made quickly.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience using Go in production environments.
  • Significant previous experience in 0→1 or high-growth startup environments.
  • Extensive contributions to open-source projects or the technical community.
  • Experience with real-money transaction systems and regulatory compliance.
  • Demonstrated impact in building developer tools or improving engineering productivity at an organizational level.
  • Proven ability to lead technical direction across multiple teams and domains.

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.1

Ready to build the future of sports betting? If you possess some of these skills but not all of them, we still encourage you to apply! Please note that visa sponsorship is not available for this position. We are open to fully remote candidates based in the United Kingdom. Remote employee may also be eligible for a home office setup stipend

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