Principal Technical Lead

Caxy Interactive • Chicago, IL

1d • $150,000 - $200,000

About The Position

We’re looking for a Principal Technical Lead to step into a high-impact role of one or more of our key clients. You’ll take over from our CTO, who currently serves as the acting architect and technical lead, and inherit a mature, well-established platform that powers player loyalty, incentive systems, and real-time gaming experiences for millions of users.
This isn’t a role where you sit back and delegate. You’ll write code, own the architecture, run releases, and lead a team of 9–11 engineers through monthly release cycles alongside a highly competent and driven product management team. You’ll partner directly with the Product Manager, Account Manager, and QA/QC team to deliver work that matters—on time, every time.
We need someone who has been in the trenches of gaming, sports betting, or trading platforms and understands what it means when downtime costs real money. Someone who can look at a complex, interconnected system and immediately see what to improve—without breaking what already works.

Requirements

• 8+ years in software engineering with progressive technical leadership responsibilities.
• 3+ years leading engineering teams of 5+ people through regular release cycles.
• Gaming, sports betting, or trading platform experience —you’ve built or maintained systems where uptime is non-negotiable and real money is on the line.
• Deep understanding of player loyalty and incentive systems, including how they integrate with broader gaming platforms.
• Proven ability to onboard into complex, established codebases and deliver meaningful improvements within the first 30–60 days.
• Track record of meeting critical deadlines in high-stakes, high-visibility environments.
• Scala — 5+ years of production experience; strong functional programming fundamentals.
• React — 5+ years building complex, responsive front-end applications.
• PostgreSQL — 5+ years; advanced query optimization, schema design, and data modeling.
• Couchbase — 3+ years working with document-oriented NoSQL at scale.
• Kafka — 3+ years designing and maintaining event-driven architectures and streaming pipelines.
• GraphQL — 3+ years designing and consuming APIs; schema design and performance tuning.
• Kibana / ELK Stack — 3+ years for monitoring, logging, and observability.
• System Architecture — demonstrated ability to design scalable, secure, performant distributed systems.
• Release & Quality Management — hands-on experience managing CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, and production deployments.
• Flawless code review discipline—you catch what others miss and elevate the team’s standards through every review.
• Comfort with AI-augmented development: you know how to use AI to speed up the mechanical parts of development while applying human judgment where it counts.
• Strong ability to prioritize and filter requests—you protect your team’s focus while ensuring critical and urgent work gets done.
• Belief that easy things should be easy and big things are always possible. You don’t make simple things complicated, and you don’t shy away from hard problems.
• Process-oriented: you adhere to established workflows, log time effectively, and stay actively engaged across all workstreams.
• Executive communication skills: you can translate technical complexity for non-technical stakeholders and build trust with clients.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Engineering Team
• Own technical direction and day-to-day leadership of a 9–11 person team including QA engineers, QC engineers, and mid-to-senior level developers.
• Run or participate in sprint ceremonies, manage delivery against monthly release targets, and ensure the team consistently meets commitments.
• Conduct thorough, exacting code reviews—your standard sets the bar for the entire team.
• Mentor and grow team members; build a culture of accountability, craftsmanship, and continuous improvement.
• Architect & Build
• Serve as the primary system architect: design scalable solutions, make technology decisions, and own the technical roadmap for the platform.
• Contribute directly to the codebase—this is a hands-on role. You write production code alongside your team.
• Onboard into the existing system quickly and identify immediate, meaningful improvements without disrupting stability.
• Balance architectural perfection with pragmatic delivery—know when something needs to be bulletproof and when it needs to ship.
• Deliver Reliably
• Own release management and quality gates. You are ultimately accountable for what goes to production.
• Meet critical timelines without sacrificing quality. Filter urgent from important and keep the team focused.
• Support the Product Manager’s business requirements and make them technically possible—find the path forward, always.
• Log time accurately and adhere to established processes. Model the discipline you expect from others.
• Think Forward
• Leverage AI tools strategically to accelerate development while preserving the human judgment and thoughtwork that makes great software.
• Identify opportunities for performance, security, and stability improvements across the platform.
• May guide additional agency work across Caxy’s portfolio as capacity and expertise allow.

Benefits

• A high-trust, high-autonomy environment. You’ll have real ownership over the technical direction of a flagship product.
• A mature, established platform—not a greenfield mess. You’re inheriting a system that works and making it better.
• Direct partnership with experienced Product, Account, and Operations leadership who respect engineering and understand the work.
• A team of capable mid-level and senior engineers, QA specialists, and QC engineers who are ready to be led well.
• Competitive compensation ($150K–$200K) reflecting the seniority and impact of this role.
• An agency environment that values craftsmanship, open-source values, and continuous learning—we’ve been doing this for over 20 years.
• The opportunity to shape how Caxy works, not just what we build. Your expertise will influence our standards, practices, and culture.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 1-10 employees