Senior Backend Engineer/Staff Engineer

Description

We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer (IC4) to set technical direction across multiple teams and own our most complex, high-impact systems. You’ll solve ambiguous problems at the platform level, shape architecture for our exchange and trading infrastructure, and raise the engineering bar across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical vision and architecture for critical systems that span multiple teams.
• Lead cross-team initiatives from design through delivery, aligning engineering, product, and compliance stakeholders.
• Own the reliability, latency, and scalability of core exchange systems, and lead incident response and postmortems for major issues.
• Make and document key architectural decisions, balancing innovation, risk, and regulatory requirements.
• Break ambiguous, org-level problems into workstreams and delegate effectively to senior and junior engineers.
• Partner with product and leadership to influence roadmap and prioritization with technical insight.
• Proactively seek development opportunities and share knowledge with peers and junior engineers.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• 7+ years of backend experience, with deep expertise in Go, Java, C++, or Python (Go strongly preferred)
• Proven track record designing and operating highly scalable, low-latency, real-time distributed systems in production
• Deep expertise in microservices, event-driven architecture (Kafka), and RESTful and WebSocket API design
• Strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL data modeling and performance tuning
• Extensive experience with AWS or equivalent, Docker and Kubernetes, and CI/CD at scale
• Experience with observability and incident management for production systems
• Experience in trading, exchange, fintech, or other high-throughput transactional systems is strongly preferred
• Demonstrated cross-team leadership and the ability to explain complex tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences
• Strong communicator, able to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Proactive, growth-focused, and highly adaptable with a strong sense of ownership

Why Join Us!

Compensation & Ownership

• Competitive compensation aligned to role and market
• Equity opportunities so you share in what we’re building
• A clear connection between impact and reward

Health & Wellbeing

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible time off built on trust and accountability
• A culture that respects your time and avoids unnecessary meetings

Remote & Flexible Work

• Fully remote within the U.S.
• Flexibility to work in the way that helps you do your best work

The Role

• Own the most complex, high-impact systems behind our exchange and trading infrastructure, and set technical direction across multiple teams
• Take on a high-impact IC role with direct influence on roadmap, architecture, and the engineering bar across the organization
• Help scale low-latency, compliant exchange systems on a platform that’s already live and regulated

About ProphetX

ProphetX is America’s first sports-native prediction market, officially CFTC-regulated.

Our technology allows us to power America’s next great asset class, prediction markets, and the key driver behind them, sports event contracts. We have deep regulatory and operational expertise when it comes to sports-focused exchange infrastructure.

We hire smart, passionate people and trust them to own their work. We’re a remote-based team that values flexibility, clear communication, and doing great work together.

Build the future of sports markets today.

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement

ProphetX is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building an inclusive, respectful, and high-performing workplace. All employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit, and business needs, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We value diverse perspectives and experiences and believe they strengthen our teams, our products, and the impact we make, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds.