Lead Full stack Engineer (R&D)

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

We’re building an R&D team working directly with the CEO and we’re looking for an exceptional senior full-stack engineer who will spearhead key projects and play a pivotal role in defining our engineering approach. You’ll lead development efforts on arbing sportsbook projects, working independently and collaboratively to deliver high-impact solutions. This is a unique opportunity to join as the first engineer and help shape this new team and technical direction. We are looking for talented engineers, both senior and junior, even if you don't have all of the below experience please still apply.

Responsibilities:

• Drive full-stack development front front-end to back-end, taking ownership of technical decisions and project direction
• Collaborate with the CEO to bring ideas to life, contributing to ideation, planning and implementation
• Dive deep into problem-solving, identifying technical challenges and digging into code to reach solutions
• Build systems and features autonomously while balancing collaboration with the CEO and, eventually, other engineers
• Maintain high coding standards and a craftsman-like approach to software development, focusing on detail, quality and sustainability
• Design, implement and maintain complex designs/features written in Python and occasionally Rust
• Leverage your experience with Javascript frameworks to enhance the development and maintainability of order management systems
• Implement alerting and monitoring to ensure production stability of our services
• Help reinforce the standard for code quality, by writing tests and reviewing pull requests
• Continuously improve engineering processes including CI/CD
• Work closely with Product and Trading 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:

• Computer Science degree
• Passion for coding and take pride in building quality software. You’re continually learning, testing and refining your work
• You’re self-driven and maintain a positive approach
• Comfortable doing everything from solving small bugs to taking on critical system issues with no task being too small or large
• Able to dig deep, understand issues thoroughly and develop efficient, well-thought-out solutions
• Skilled at working with minimal guidance while knowing to collaborate effectively when needed
• Minimum 5+ years of experience working with Python or a compiled language 
• Built distributed systems in a modern cloud environment
• DevOps engineering stacks/tools/practices
• Interest in sports and sports betting
• Strong written and spoken communication skills in English
• Ok working five days a week in the office alongside the CEO

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.

Salary & Benefits

We offer a base salary up to £180,000 - our offer will be based on your performance in the interview assessments.
We are a diverse, high-performing team where your contributions matter. We're looking for passionate individuals to help us achieve our goals in a dynamic and supportive work environment.

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!
• 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

• Short take home task

• Technical Interview - Task review + Algorithm & System Design Architecture

• In Office Interview - Experience and Mindset Chat + Lunch with the team