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Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin
full-timeUnited States$144k - $205k

Summary

Location

United States

Salary

$144k - $205k

Type

full-time

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About this role

Overview 

As a Staff Engineer, Client Services at Fanatics Betting & Gaming (FBG), you’ll join the Sportsbook Client team—an innovative, culturally driven group powering the rapidly growing Fanatics Sportsbook app. The team owns the core customer experience, from showcasing markets, events, and player statistics to rendering highly dynamic, real-time data. Together, we build features that elevate performance, usability, and engagement, driving customer loyalty through an exceptional user experience.

As a Staff Engineer at FBG, you are a seasoned contributor and technical leader, known for your ability to build scalable, high-impact solutions that drive the business forward. You combine deep hands-on expertise with a strong architectural mindset, delivering results across mobile systems. You are expected to set the technical direction, drive engineering excellence across multiple client-facing teams, and empower engineers to deliver features at the highest quality. You play a key role in shaping the future of our technology stack while mentoring others and setting a high bar for engineering excellence.

We embrace principles of data-driven development, operational excellence, and continuous process optimization to deliver a stable, scalable platform. Central to our strategy is Kotlin, and Kotlin Multiplatform, which empowers us to deliver high-quality features quickly and consistently across multiple ecosystems. By focusing on object-oriented design, modern coding practices, open-source frameworks, and third-party platform integrations, we continuously innovate and deliver at speed in this exciting and fast-moving market.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the planning, design, and technical development of major product features, from inception through deployment, ensuring alignment with overall platform strategy.
  • Own and drive technical excellence, including defining and scaling best practices in code quality, system design, and testing across the Client Services domain and peer teams.
  • Conduct exceptionally thorough and constructive technical design and code reviews to maintain the highest bar for quality, reliability, and security.
  • Mentor and empower engineers across multiple teams, fostering a culture of technical ownership, innovation, and continuous improvement.
  • Help your team define and adhere to the principles, guidelines, and best practices of our engineering strategy and actively drive adoption across related client teams.
  • Lead end-to-end delivery of multi-team projects, coordinating across engineering, product, and design. Effectively represent the team's plans, updates, and technical decisions in cross-functional planning and review forums.
  • Define and lead the testing strategy for complex client-side features and systems, promoting a culture of quality and ensuring systems are testable by design.
  • Guide teams in operational best practices, actively raising the bar for observability, reliability, and system resilience. Design, stress-test, and refine systems for maintainability.
  • Improve the team's processes and response rhythms for handling high-pressure situations, scope changes, or production incidents, fostering an environment of composure and continuous learning.
  • Develop, test, document, and deploy high quality software into production.
  • Develop a fundamental understanding of our industry, product, feature set and roadmap.
  • Work closely with our product team, design, and other internal stakeholders to make technology decisions that grow and improve our products.
  • Participate in an on-call rotation to address urgent issues outside business hours and contribute to app enhancements and operational efficiency (OE) by troubleshooting and resolving application-related problems.
  • Escalate when tasks or projects hit roadblocks.
  • Be open to occasional travel to Fanatics offices and other locations for conferences, events, meetings, and team-building activities.

Required Qualifications

  • 7+ years of experience designing and building highly scalable backend services.
  • Expertise with Kotlin as the primary development language, OR deep knowledge of Java with a strong willingness to transition to and develop primarily in Kotlin.
  • Proven experience with modern backend frameworks such as Spring Boot or similar.
  • Experience with Coroutines and Dependency Injection.
  • Team-first mentality, with a willingness to do what it takes to get the job done and a desire to strive for better.
  • Able to effectively communicate complex technical subjects to a variety of audiences (engineers, technical leaders, marketing and operations teams, non-technical functional leaders).
  • Familiar with Agile software product delivery and SCRUM methodology.
  • Thrives in a high-growth environment where priorities evolve regularly and decisions are made quickly.
  • Able to effectively work cross-functionally within an enterprise environment.
  • A Bachelor’s degree, or professional certification, or a combination of education and experience

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience designing and building backend services using Spring Boot or similar Java frameworks
  • Experience working in large-scale distributed systems and event-driven architectures
  • Exposure to cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, GCP), CI/CD pipelines, and observability tools
  • Familiarity with functional programming paradigms and actor-based concurrency frameworks like Apache Pekko (or Akka).

     

If you possess some of these qualifications but not all of them, we still encourage you to apply!

 

The expected salary range for this role is based on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This role is eligible for the Fanatics Betting and Gaming annual bonus program and an equity award. Salary range is listed in USD; actual salary will vary based on location. Salary Range: $144,000 - $205,000 per year (actual salary will be determined in part by a successful candidate’s geographic location). In addition to base salary, bonus, and equity, full-time employees are eligible for Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K, paid time off, and other benefits like GymPass, Pet Insurance, Family Care Benefits, and more.

 

Other facts

Tech stack
Kotlin,Java,Spring Boot,Backend Services,Coroutines,Dependency Injection,Agile,SCRUM,Cloud Infrastructure,CI/CD,Observability Tools,Functional Programming,Actor-Based Concurrency,Technical Leadership,System Design,Code Quality

About Fanatics

The Topps Company, Inc. is the iconic, preeminent leader in physical and digital collectibles. Acquired by Fanatics Collectibles in January 2022, Topps is the company's cornerstone licensed trading card brand.
Founded in 1938, The Topps Company started in confections with "Topps Gum" (later introducing Bazooka Bubble Gum) and released its first trading card set in 1950. Today, the company produces trading cards and collectibles, custom cards, memorabilia, sticker album collections and more related to iconic and pop culture brands such as Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, Star Wars, Bundesliga, UEFA Champions League, World Wrestling Entertainment and Garbage Pail Kids. Fanatics Collectibles has also secured long-term, exclusive rights to design, manufacture and distribute trading cards for several additional sports properties, including NBA, NBPA and NFLPA, in the coming years.

Topps’ Digital Apps division produces, develops and operates mobile applications that give you access to an exclusive digital card collection at your fingertips that are sold via the Apple and Google app stores under the brand names BUNT, KICK, NHL SKATE, Star Wars Card Trader, The Walking Dead Universe Collect, WWE SLAM, Marvel Collect! and Disney Collect! https://play.toppsapps.com/.

Headquartered in New York City, Topps maintains offices in several countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, India and Brazil.

Team size: 201-500 employees
LinkedIn: Visit
Industry: Manufacturing

What you'll do

  • Lead the planning, design, and technical development of major product features while ensuring alignment with platform strategy. Mentor engineers and drive technical excellence across multiple teams.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Fanatics pay for a Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin?

Fanatics offers a competitive compensation package for the Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin role. The salary range is USD 144k - 205k per year. Apply through Clera to learn more about the full compensation details.

What does a Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin do at Fanatics?

As a Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin at Fanatics, you will: lead the planning, design, and technical development of major product features while ensuring alignment with platform strategy. Mentor engineers and drive technical excellence across multiple teams..

Why join Fanatics as a Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin?

Fanatics is a leading Manufacturing company. The Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin role offers competitive compensation.

Is the Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin position at Fanatics remote?

The Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin position at Fanatics is based in United States, United States. Contact the company through Clera for specific work arrangement details.

How do I apply for the Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin position at Fanatics?

You can apply for the Staff Engineer - Backend Kotlin position at Fanatics directly through Clera. Click the "Apply Now" button above to start your application. Clera's AI-powered platform will help match your profile with this opportunity and guide you through the application process. You can also learn more about Fanatics on their website.