Backend Software Engineer

Who are we?

Smarkets is a betting exchange for sports and political trading that has handled over £29 billion in volume since 2010. Our company mission is to fix the betting industry with the best products and best prices. We are upending the sports betting industry by growing a transparent platform that offers the best value for bettors, with the fairest odds, best technology and a superior customer experience.

Smarkets is a Series B tech company that brings a professional, product-led approach to our mission. We embrace collaboration, trust, innovation and scientific rigour, while we celebrate ambitious goals and passionate energy. Our culture rewards people on merit and excellence and we strive to provide a working environment where recognition, challenges, support, collaboration, interesting benefits and shared meals provided by our chefs mix together to let you unlock your potential, grow with us and become your best self.

Join our team and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our betting trading technology landscape.

The Role

As a Mid-Level Software Engineer within our Engineering org, you will play a pivotal role in designing, developing, and maintaining the services that power Smarkets' business operations products. You will collaborate closely with engineering managers, technical leadership, and product managers to lead complex technical projects aligned with the Smarkets product roadmap.

Smarkets is looking for talented and passionate engineers like you for an exciting opportunity to create a unified and high-performing system that will not only optimize our services but also elevate Smarkets to new heights of success.

We believe in using the best tools for the job. We support two programming languages - a fast compiled language (Rust) for critical path operations and a slower interpreted one (Python) for other tasks. Our Kafka pub/sub MQ, the heart of our system, offers high availability, low latency, and message persistence. We provide gRPC and HTTP APIs for various metadata, while PostgreSQL and ElasticSearch serve as our go-to databases.

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement and maintain complex designs/features written in Python and Rust
• Implement alerting and monitoring to ensure the stability of our services
• Help reinforce the standard for code quality, by writing tests and reviewing merge requests
• Continuously improve engineering processes including CI/CD
• Mentor technically your direct teammates
• Work closely with Product and other engineering teams to scope and lead complex business goal-aligned projects
• Be the champion of the stack by demonstrating first-hand how to implement functionalities in the right way, with an eye to the horizon and your mind on the present

Role Requirements:

• 4+ years of experience as a software engineer
• Familiarity with Python or at least one compiled language (Java, C++, Rust, Go) and are keen on learning Rust
• Previous experience with building distributed systems in a modern cloud environment
• Previous experience with DevOps engineering stacks/tools/practices including GitLab and K8S
• Previous experience with message queues (e.g. Apache Kafka) and SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
• Previous experience working in Sports Betting or Finance industries
• Strong written and spoken communication skills in English
• The ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams

Values

• Push to win
• Make others better
• Give a shit
• Be a pro
• Bring the energy

Our values are at the heart of everything that we do. We believe these are the fundamentals to ensure we are delivering what’s expected of us in the best way possible for ourselves and for those around us.

Benefits

We offer a competitive salary package and benefits, along with a dynamic and collaborative work environment. Your work with us will make an impact and your voice will be heard. We are a diverse team with a strong work ethic and plenty of hunger to win. We have designed our benefits offering around Health, Wealth, Lifestyle and Development.

These include:

• Stock options which vests over 4 years
• Pension scheme - An impressive pension scheme via Aviva. We will match 6% if you choose the same
• Health insurance
• Fresh fruit and snacks provided in the office everyday! (tea, coffee, soft drinks also included)
• We’re a member of a cycle to work scheme
• We want to continue to invest in all our employees and do so by providing a £1000 yearly education budget that can be used on courses, conferences, books or training
• 25 days paid holiday + bank holidays to enjoy - you have the choice to carry over 5 days to the next year!
• Flexible working - we want to provide a hybrid model approach to working and provide you with 2 days a week working from home
• 20 days a year of globally working - we provide the ability to work from anywhere in the world for up to 20 days a year
• We will provide you lunch everyday in the office - you don’t need to worry about feeding your belly as we have it sorted with top quality food served by our in-house Chef Alex!

What happens next​

We aim to have a simple and speedy hiring process and we want to make sure that we are right for you as much as the other way around.

• CV application review - We will review it as quickly as possible
• Let’s chat - Quick chat with our team about your experience and the role
• HackerRank Exercise - At home test to show off your skills
• Technical Interview - Live Coding
• In Office Interview - Experience and Mindset Chat + Lunch with other colleagues in the team