Lead Backend Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Florida.

📋 Description

• Take full technical ownership of the backend, encompassing game logic, promotions, payments, sweepstakes, player accounts, admin/backoffice, and analytics.

• Lead the design and development of the real-time gameplay layer based on WebSocket and Akka-actor, as well as the Akka cluster.

• Ensure the accuracy of integrations with Paysafe and WorldPay, including 3DS flows, Apple StoreKit, and Google Play billing.

• Collaborate with legal and compliance teams to address regulatory requirements for sweepstakes-model gaming.

• Implement and assess modifications to the backend infrastructure that is utilized across all three casino gaming products.

• Consider the cross-product implications of any infrastructure changes.

• Take responsibility for production health, including deployments, cluster operations, incident responses, and postmortems.

• Set the technical direction, conduct code reviews, and elevate the standards of engineering judgment.

• Acquire knowledge from the outgoing lead through thorough documentation and establish yourself as the primary technical authority of the system.

⛳️ Requirements

• A minimum of 7 years of professional backend engineering experience, demonstrating real ownership of a production system at a significant scale.

• Proficient in Scala — focusing on functional programming rather than merely using Scala syntax with Java habits — preferably with Play Framework or a similar typed functional web framework.

• Hands-on experience with an actor-model or a comparable distributed-systems framework (such as Akka, Erlang/OTP, or similar), including cluster operations, rather than just local single-node usage.

• Familiarity with async/reactive database access patterns (such as ReactiveMongo or equivalent reactive driver experience).

• Proven ownership of at least one payment, billing, or other compliance-sensitive integration in a production environment.

• Strong judgment in distributed systems: capable of reasoning about race conditions, ensuring idempotency during retries/duplicate deliveries, and maintaining compatibility during rolling deployments without prompting.

• Preferred: Background in iGaming, sweepstakes, or other regulated real-money gaming sectors.

• Preferred: Experience with real-time, low-latency, or WebSocket-intensive backend systems.

• Preferred: Expertise in maintaining and evolving a legacy codebase (10+ years) without resorting to a complete rewrite.

• Preferred: Knowledge of MongoDB operations beyond query writing, including indexing strategies and replica set behavior under load.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.

• Comprehensive health and wellness benefits.

• Flexible work hours and remote work options.

• Opportunities for professional development and career advancement.

• Engaging team culture with regular team-building activities.