Staff Backend Engineer

Fanatics•Los Angeles, CA

102d•$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.