Senior Back End Engineer

PrizePicks•Atlanta, GA

3h•Remote

About The Position

At PrizePicks, we are changing the game in daily fantasy sports. We are a passionate team of innovators dedicated to creating a best-in-class experience for our members. Our engineering team builds and scales the platform that powers our explosive growth, from real-time contest engines to the services that handle millions of daily transactions. We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Social Experience team and help us continue to build the future of fantasy sports.

Requirements

5–8 years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time building production Ruby on Rails applications
Proven track record of owning and delivering complex, multi-component features in a team environment
Experience designing and operating backend systems that handle significant scale and complexity
Expert-level Ruby on Rails proficiency — you understand the framework deeply, write idiomatic Ruby, and know when to leverage or work around Rails conventions
Strong proficiency with PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning at scale
Solid understanding of API design — RESTful services, serialization strategies, and versioning
Experience with background job processing (Sidekiq or similar) and asynchronous workflows
Experience with containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
Understanding of observability practices — logging, metrics, tracing
Working knowledge of Go — our backend includes significant Go services, and cross-stack capability is valued at this level
Comfortable working autonomously with minimal direction on ambiguous problems
Effective communicator who can articulate technical decisions to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders
Experience working in a fully remote engineering organization
Able to context-switch between deep technical work and collaborative planning

Nice To Haves

Experience leveraging AI-assisted development tools across the development lifecycle — coding, planning, scoping, and code review
Experience integrating AI tooling into engineering workflows to accelerate team productivity
Experience building social or relationship-driven systems (feeds, follows, reactions, activity streams, recommendation engine)
Experience designing stat-driven profile systems (aggregations, rollups, derived metrics) at scale
Experience building social systems that are designed for rapid experimentation (feature flags, ranking experiments, growth loops)
Deep understanding of graph-shaped data modeling and fan-out patterns
Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction horizontally across teams to ensure cohesive social experiences

Responsibilities

Design and build backend services: Architect and implement Rails-based services that are performant, scalable, and reliable, supporting high-throughput workloads and complex business logic.
Own technical delivery: Lead the technical design and implementation of complex features end-to-end — from product requirements through deployment and monitoring.
Drive system reliability: Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks, optimize database queries, and improve the resilience of backend systems under load.
Define technical direction: Propose and drive architectural decisions for your team’s services, evaluating tradeoffs and communicating recommendations clearly.
Mentor and elevate: Provide hands-on mentorship to Software Engineers I, II, and III on your team and in the organization through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance.
Improve engineering practices: Define, advocate for, and improve best practices around code quality, testing, observability, and deployment for your team.
Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with Product Managers, Designers, QA, and other engineering teams to translate product goals into well-scoped technical solutions.
Participate in on-call rotation: Share responsibility for production incidents, contributing to root cause analysis and long-term reliability improvements.

Benefits

Company-subsidized medical, dental, & vision plans
401(k) plan with company match
Annual bonus
Flexible PTO to encourage a healthy work/life balance (2 weeks STRONGLY encouraged!)
Generous paid leave programs, including 16-week paid parental leave and disability benefits
Workplace flexibility and modern work schedules focused on getting the job done, not hours clocked
Company-wide in-person events and team outings
Lifestyle enhancement program
Company equipment provided (Windows & Mac options)
Annual performance reviews with opportunities for growth and career development