Staff Platform Engineer, Fanatics Markets - UK

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.

Role Overview

As a Staff Software Engineer within our Platform team, you will help define the technical direction of the platform underpinning our exchange and trading systems. You will lead the design and evolution of our infrastructure and platform standards to support a highly available, low-latency exchange, partnering closely with exchange engineers and engineering leads to enable rapid innovation without compromising stability or security.

This role requires a balance of deep hands-on software engineering, systems thinking and technical leadership. You will lead complex projects that support the exchange—from load-testing environments and mock integrations to monitoring and automated recovery. You will turn ambiguous requirements into practical designs, own delivery from ideation to production and help operate the platform as the exchange goes live. The balance of coding and infrastructure work varies by project, but you should be comfortable independently developing new software as well as improving existing systems, setting platform standards and mentoring engineers across experience levels.

On the engineering side, we are pioneering the use of AI as a code collaborator. We need engineers who have moved beyond experimentation—who actively use tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot to ship production code faster while maintaining exceptional quality.

• Lead the design and development of software tools, services and automation that solve complex infrastructure, reliability and developer experience challenges.
• Define and evolve the architecture of highly available cloud-native infrastructure, balancing performance, reliability, security and cost as the platform grows.
• Set technical direction for CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling, remaining hands-on in delivering improvements to the software delivery lifecycle.
• Lead the development of load-testing environments and supporting software, including mock services and integrations.
• Establish and evolve standards for AI-augmented development, using effective prompting and validation practices to increase velocity without sacrificing code quality.
• Identify and mitigate AI-generated code pitfalls, such as security vulnerabilities or over-abstraction, and help teams evaluate the impact on quality and productivity.
• Guide the design and implementation of platform security safeguards and compliance standards to protect the integrity of the firm’s systems.
• Shape the system observability roadmap and lead improvements to monitoring, tracing, alerting and automated recovery.
• Partner with exchange, product and engineering leads to resolve architectural trade-offs, align priorities and deliver scalable platform solutions.
• Mentor engineers across experience levels, lead technical design discussions and raise engineering standards across teams.
• Participate in the on-call rotation, lead incident response for team-owned services and drive engineering improvements that prevent recurring incidents.

• Significant experience in software, backend or platform engineering, with a track record of leading complex technical projects and delivering production software and scalable, cloud-native environments.
• Deep software development expertise, including the ability to independently design, build, test and deploy services or substantial tools from scratch and guide others through complex implementation decisions.
• Deep hands-on Kubernetes experience, including designing and operating production environments, troubleshooting complex failures, and establishing patterns for high availability and efficient scaling.
• Strong hands-on experience with AWS and infrastructure as code using Terraform, including making architectural decisions across complex environments.
• High proficiency in Java and Python; Go is a plus. You should be comfortable bridging the gap between infrastructure and application logic.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems and the ability to make and explain trade-offs between low latency, high availability, scalability and operational complexity.
• Experience shaping CI/CD and observability approaches, with hands-on knowledge of tools such as Prometheus, Grafana or Datadog.
• Strong proficiency in using AI collaborators such as Claude Code, Cursor or GitHub Copilot to ship production code and improve engineering workflows.
• Ability to evaluate AI-generated code for security gaps or architectural errors and establish rigorous testing and validation practices.
• Proven ability to turn ambiguous problems into a clear technical direction and deliver improvements across team boundaries, balancing immediate needs with long-term architectural health.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical decisions, influence without formal authority and collaborate effectively with distributed engineering and product teams.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and building alignment around technical standards and architectural decisions.

• Experience in high-growth startup environments.
• Experience with financial systems, exchanges, real-money transactions or regulatory compliance.
• Background in designing and building internal developer platforms, tools, CLI applications or infrastructure automation services.
• Experience developing load-testing environments, mock services or automated recovery systems.
• Experience leading technical initiatives spanning multiple teams or evolving platform architecture through significant growth or change.

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.

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 employees may also be eligible for a home office setup stipend.

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Fanatics is a leading global sports platform redefining how fans connect with the teams, players and moments they love. Our businesses — Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, Fanatics Betting & Gaming, Fanatics Events, Fanatics Advertising, Fanatics Markets and Fanatics Studios — maximize the presence and reach for hundreds of partners globally and create a one-stop experience that allows fans to buy, bet, collect, and earn, while engaging with sports in deeper, more immersive ways.

This includes licensed fan gear and lifestyle products, sportsbook and iGaming, physical and digital trading cards, live events, premium sports entertainment content, credit card offerings and more. Together, they form a powerful, integrated ecosystem — connected by the Fanatics ONE loyalty program and FanCash, the currency of sport — delivering personalized experiences to over 100 million fans worldwide. Fanatics holds partnerships with over 900 sports properties, from professional leagues and players’ associations to teams, colleges and retail partners; over 7,000 athletes and celebrities; and over 2,000 retail locations, including all Lids stores.

Backed by a team of more than 22,000 employees, Fanatics is committed to relentlessly enhancing the fan experience.