Staff Backend Engineer

About the Team

Fanatics Collect is a technology company dedicated to revolutionizing the world of collectibles. Every single day our team of experienced product leaders, creative thinkers, and operators obsesses over how to create the ultimate collector experience - from developing the most fun and entertaining live shopping experience with Fanatics Live, to building the most trusted and dynamic collector focused marketplace with PWCC (acquired in May 2023).

We have the unique advantage of being backed by Fanatics - the world’s largest sports merchandiser, with more than 900 global sports relationships, 90+ million reachable fans, and exclusive licensing deals with the MLB, NFL, and NBA among many others - but we’re a small, nimble, ambitious team building products from the ground up. 

If you're passionate about building world class products and share our love for sports fans and collectors, Fanatics Collect offers an exciting opportunity to be part of a dynamic team creating the future of collecting.

Role Summary

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.

What You’ll Do

• Collaborate Closely
  • 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.
• Architect & Build
  • Lead the design and implementation of microservices, event-driven workflows, and data pipelines.
  • Ensure high availability, scalability, and security for core backend systems.
• Drive Technical Excellence
  • Establish best practices for code quality, testing, performance tuning, and documentation.
  • Conduct architecture reviews, mentor peers, and promote continuous improvement.
• Own Key Projects
  • 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.
• Foster Learning & Innovation
  • 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 We’re Looking For

• Education
  • Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field required
• Experience & Expertise
  • 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.
• DevOps Mindset
  • 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).
• Collaboration & Communication
  • 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.
• Leadership & Mentorship
  • 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 environmen

Ensure your Fanatics job offer is legitimate and don’t fall victim to fraud.  Fanatics never seeks payment from job applicants. Feel free to ask your recruiter for a phone call or other type of communication for interview, and ensure your communication is coming from a Fanatics email address (including @collectfanatics.com).  For added security, where possible, apply through our company website at www.fanaticsinc.com/careers