Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform. We ignite the passions of global sports fans and maximize the presence and reach for our hundreds of sports partners globally by offering products and services across Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming, allowing sports fans to Buy, Collect, and Bet. Through the Fanatics platform, sports fans can buy licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods; collect physical and digital trading cards, sports memorabilia, and other digital assets; and bet as the company builds its Sportsbook and iGaming platform. Fanatics has an established database of over 100 million global sports fans; a global partner network with approximately 900 sports properties, including major national and international professional sports leagues, players associations, teams, colleges, college conferences and retail partners, 2,500 athletes and celebrities, and 200 exclusive athletes; and over 2,000 retail locations, including its Lids retail stores. Our more than 22,000 employees are committed to relentlessly enhancing the fan experience and delighting sports fans globally.
Launched in 2021, Fanatics Betting and Gaming is the online and retail sports betting subsidiary of Fanatics, a global digital sports platform. The Fanatics Sportsbook is available to 95% of the addressable online sports bettor market in the U.S. Fanatics Casino is currently available online in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Fanatics Betting and Gaming operates twenty-two retail sports betting locations, including the only sportsbook inside an NFL stadium at Northwest Stadium. Fanatics Betting and Gaming is headquartered in New York with offices in Denver, Leeds and Dublin.
Overview
As a Staff Backend Engineer at Fanatics Betting & Gaming (FBG), you will be the architectural owner of backend systems that safeguard our customers and ensure a trusted, compliant, and frictionless betting experience. You will design and evolve large-scale distributed systems that power fraud detection and responsible gaming capabilities focused on customer identity, account management, and financial transactions across mobile and web platforms.
This role blends deep backend technical expertise with architectural leadership. You will define the long-term technical vision for fraud prevention, identity verification, and responsible gaming enforcement — ensuring our systems are secure, reliable, and adaptive to evolving threats and regulations. You'll collaborate closely with Risk, Compliance, and Product partners to build a platform that balances safety, user trust, and operational efficiency.
At FBG, we're revolutionizing sports betting with a customer-first approach that prioritizes integrity, fairness, and innovation. As a technical leader in the CAT (Customer, Accounts & Transactions) domain, you'll help shape the foundation of trust and safety for millions of Fanatics customers.
Responsibilities
- Own and evolve the backend architecture that powers fraud detection and responsible gaming features.
- Design and implement distributed systems in Java and Spring Boot, building scalable services and APIs for real-time risk evaluation, transaction monitoring, and behavioral analysis.
- Collaborate with Data Science, Risk, and Compliance teams to integrate fraud prevention models, transaction scoring engines, and responsible gaming rulesets into core backend flows.
- Architect event-driven systems leveraging technologies like Kafka to capture and analyze transactional and behavioral signals in real time.
- Lead large-scale technical initiatives, such as the modernization of fraud detection services, identity platform evolution, or real-time customer protection pipelines.
- Establish backend and API best practices, emphasizing security, observability, reliability, and compliance.
- Mentor and develop engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous learning.
- Partner with cross-functional teams—including frontend, mobile, product, and analytics—to ensure seamless and secure end-to-end user experiences.
- Champion responsible gaming and anti-fraud principles, helping define system patterns that promote fairness and regulatory alignment.
- Lead architectural reviews, incident postmortems, and design sessions, ensuring consistent improvement and knowledge sharing.
- Stay ahead of emerging fraud, identity, and responsible gaming technologies, and advocate for pragmatic adoption that strengthens our platform.
- Be open to occasional travel to Fanatics offices or industry events for planning, collaboration, and team development.
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with deep expertise in Java and Spring Boot.
- Proven ability to design and evolve secure, high-scale, low-latency distributed systems.
- Strong understanding of authentication, authorization, payment systems, or fraud prevention patterns.
- Experience designing APIs and backend systems that integrate with risk, compliance, or regulatory services.
- Skilled at balancing performance, scalability, and compliance in high-traffic systems.
- Demonstrated success driving technical alignment and architectural strategy across multiple teams.
- Strong communicator who can clearly articulate complex technical solutions to engineering, product, and leadership audiences.
- Passion for customer protection, data integrity, and operational excellence.
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, highly regulated environment with evolving priorities.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and observability tooling (Datadog, Grafana, CloudWatch).
- Familiarity with event-driven architectures, message streaming systems (Kafka), and real-time data pipelines.
- Exposure to machine learning integration for fraud detection or responsible gaming scoring.
- Experience building or modernizing identity, payments, or compliance platforms.
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives focused on trust, security, or user protection.
- Enthusiasm for developer experience, clean API design, and maintainable, resilient systems.
Remote employee may also be eligible for a home office setup stipend.
Depending on the role, your interview and onboarding experience may include in-person components, such as onsite interviews or Launching into Better: LIVE—a multi-day cultural immersion in New York City for full-time, non-seasonal hires. These sessions are designed to build connection and bring our culture to life, though specific travel and participation requirements will be confirmed based on your role and location. Your recruiter will provide clear guidance at each stage of the process.
Ready to build the future of sports betting? If you possess some of these skills but not all of them, we still encourage you to apply! Please note that visa sponsorship is not available for this position. We are open to fully remote candidates based in the United Kingdom. Remote employee may also be eligible for a home office setup stipend.
For information about our benefits, please visit https://bhttps://hub.allmybenefits.co.uk/fanatics-0223/
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