Staff Backend Engineer - Sports

ABOUT THE ROLE LeoVegas Group is building a world-class Sportsbook platform. Within the Sports domain, we work in a high-volume, real-time environment where speed, correctness, scalability and reliability are critical, building the services that transform incoming sports, trading and pricing data into experiences used by millions of customers. We are looking for a highly experienced Staff Backend Engineer to help lead the design, development and evolution of these distributed systems. You will provide technical leadership across architecture, engineering practices and platform evolution while remaining hands-on, helping teams make better technical decisions, raise engineering standards, simplify complex systems and balance business needs with long-term platform health. This role suits someone who enjoys understanding the technical and business context behind problems rather than implementing solutions mechanically. We value engineers who are curious and proactive, comfortable with ambiguity, and who lead through collaboration and ownership rather than authority. WHAT YOU'LL DO • Lead architecture and design discussions for scalable, resilient and maintainable distributed systems, evaluating options through spikes, experiments and proofs of concept. • Drive simplification of complex systems while holding a high bar for performance, reliability and code quality. • Identify scalability, resiliency and operational risks before they reach production, and lead root cause analysis when incidents occur. • Improve observability, monitoring and operational readiness, and drive down technical debt across the platform. • Promote best practices around event-driven and reactive architectures, performance optimisation, testing, automation and CI/CD. • Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, pair programming and technical guidance. • Partner with Product, Engineering Managers and Architects to translate business problems into practical solutions, and help shape and break down technical initiatives. • Contribute to a culture of ownership, collaboration, continuous improvement and engineering excellence. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR ESSENTIAL SKILLS • Proven experience designing, building and operating distributed systems at scale, owning complex backend systems end-to-end in production. • Strong backend expertise in Java (preferably 21+), with a solid understanding of JVM internals, concurrency and multithreading. • Hands-on experience with Reactive Programming and non-blocking systems using Spring Boot and/or Vert.x. • Hands-on experience with Apache Kafka and event-driven architectures; familiarity with streaming and messaging technologies such as Redis or NATS. • Experience with Redis for caching and low-latency data access, and with SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB). • Experience with observability and monitoring platforms such as Datadog, Grafana or Kibana, and with debugging complex production incidents. • Strong system design and architectural decision-making, balancing latency, throughput, consistency, operational complexity and maintainability. • Ability to influence technical decisions and communicate effectively with engineers, architects, product managers and other stakeholders. NICE TO HAVE • Experience with Kubernetes, AWS and/or GCP, and cloud-native architecture patterns. • Experience with OpenSearch and/or Elasticsearch for search, analytics and operational troubleshooting. • Experience building internal platforms, shared frameworks or developer productivity tooling, with a strong SRE mindset. • Experience within sports betting, gaming or other real-time, data-intensive domains. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE • Teams rely on you for technical direction and practical problem-solving, and move faster thanks to the foundations, tooling, standards and guidance you help establish. • The platform becomes more reliable, scalable and easier to operate over time, with fewer production incidents. • Technical decisions are made with greater clarity, consistency and long-term sustainability. • Cross-team dependencies are better coordinated, reducing friction and improving delivery. • Engineers grow technically through your mentorship, feedback and leadership. WHO WE ARE At the core of LeoVegas Group is Team Leo. Our culture is our foundation and is what enables us to innovate, build and lead as we trailblaze our way through the igaming industry. We're a team of over 2000 innovators, initiators and groundbreakers working in a fast-paced and agile environment across 21 offices worldwide. WHAT WE OFFER • Competitive salary aligned with your experience, expertise and impact. • A collaborative, inclusive and fast-paced engineering environment where ideas are welcomed, ownership is encouraged and continuous learning is valued. • Hybrid work policy and 4 weeks of Workation (T&Cs apply). • Benefits package - 800 PLN net (B2B)/gross (UOP) monthly with access to the cafeteria platform (private medical care, insurances, sports card). • Training budget and the ICAS assistance programme for support during challenging moments. • Complimentary snacks and drinks in the office, with complimentary breakfast on Mondays. • Team and office social events throughout the year. • Free parking for bicycles and motorcycles, and a free gym in the building. • Equipment: MacBook Pro and smartphone (iPhone 16/17 or Samsung Galaxy S25). JOIN US! In our pride, we empower our teammates to find their roar and run with their wildest ideas. We don't wait for things to happen; we pounce and make it happen! Would you be a good fit for the Leo Pride - give us a roar! As our company working language is English, we'd like to see your CV in English, please.