Staff Backend Engineer

Fanatics • Los Angeles, CA

161d • $172,000 - $258,000

About The Position

FanaticsCollect.com is on a mission to build the ultimate digital collectibles platform for sports and entertainment fans worldwide. As we embark on our next-generation backend rewrite, we’re looking for a seasoned Staff Backend Engineer to join our cross-functional team. You’ll work hand-in-hand with frontend and DevOps engineers to design, develop, and deploy scalable services that power new marketplace features, real-time experiences, and data-driven insights.

Requirements

• 5+ years building backend services in high-traffic, distributed environments.
• Deep knowledge of at least one major backend language (e.g., Java, Go, Python, Node.js) and its ecosystem.
• Solid understanding of microservices, REST/GraphQL, message queues (Kafka/RabbitMQ), and relational/NoSQL databases.
• Experience in AWS/GCP.
• Hands-on with containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI) and monitoring/logging stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).
• Proven ability to work seamlessly with frontend, design, QA, and DevOps teams.
• Strong verbal and written communication; experience running design discussions and writing technical specs.
• Track record of guiding and growing other engineers—pair programming, code reviews, career coaching.
• Ability to influence technical direction and drive consensus in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Partner with frontend engineers to define and expose clean, performant APIs and data contracts.
• Work with DevOps/SRE to design robust CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, monitoring, and alerting.
• Lead the design and implementation of microservices, event-driven workflows, and data pipelines.
• Ensure high availability, scalability, and security for core backend systems.
• Establish best practices for code quality, testing, performance tuning, and documentation.
• Conduct architecture reviews, mentor peers, and promote continuous improvement.
• Spearhead major initiatives—from feature conception through production rollout—across payments, inventory, search, and real-time notification services.
• Identify technical risks, propose solutions, and coordinate cross-team deliveries.
• Stay current on emerging backend technologies, cloud services, and industry trends.
• Lead brown-bag sessions, hackathons, or tech talks to share knowledge across teams.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees