Staff Software Engineer – Backend

Sleeper

101d • $225,000 - $300,000

About The Position

Sleeper is on a mission to connect people over sports through games and community. As one of the fastest-growing platforms in the fantasy sports and real-money gaming space, we’re redefining how sports fans engage—whether it’s through season-long leagues, pick’em contests, or real-time interactions with friends. Our team is lean, passionate, and product-driven. We obsess over user experience and believe that building delightful, fast, and reliable products is the best way to grow. Backed by some of the most respected investors in Silicon Valley, including Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst, we're building the future of sports engagement. We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer - Backend to help us scale the core systems behind our fantasy sports and DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) offerings. In this role, you’ll drive architectural decisions, build critical backend services, and mentor fellow engineers as we scale to support tens of millions of passionate sports fans. As a senior technical leader, you’ll collaborate cross-functionally to bring innovative features to life—from real-time contest engines and game logic to personalized content and secure, seamless payments. You’ll be empowered to own major parts of the backend stack and help define what 'great' looks like in terms of performance, scalability, and reliability at Sleeper.

Requirements

• 7+ years of backend software engineering experience, including experience in staff-level or tech lead roles.
• Proven ability to design and scale distributed systems that serve millions of users in real-time or gaming environments.
• Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Go, Python, Node.js, Java), and an understanding of trade-offs between them.
• Deep knowledge of databases (both SQL and NoSQL), caching strategies, and message queues (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ, Pub/Sub).
• Comfortable designing and maintaining RESTful and/or graphql APIs, data models, and internal tooling.
• Cloud experience (AWS, GCP, or similar), with familiarity with containers (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes a plus).
• Strong product mindset—you care about the why, not just the how, and you build with users in mind.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills. You elevate your teammates and enjoy mentoring.

Nice To Haves

• Passion for sports, gaming, or building multiplayer or real-time systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core backend systems that power Sleeper's games and real-time user experiences—fantasy contests, Sleeper Picks, user profiles, leaderboards, and more.
• Architect scalable, distributed systems capable of handling millions of concurrent users with low latency and high availability.
• Lead backend initiatives from concept to deployment, ensuring clean interfaces, well-documented services, and resilient infrastructure.
• Optimize system performance and proactively address bottlenecks through monitoring, profiling, and capacity planning.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, and frontend teams to deliver features that users love.
• Mentor engineers, provide thoughtful code reviews, and shape backend engineering best practices and standards.
• Drive innovation, technical direction, and team culture as a key engineering voice at the leadership level.

Benefits

• Competitive salary ($225,000–$300,000/year not inclusive of stock options and benefits)
• Equity
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) with company matching
• Generous PTO and flexible remote work policy
• Opportunities for fast career growth in a high-impact role
• A small, focused team where your contributions truly matter

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 1-10 employees