Principal Backend Engineer - Core

Role overview A digital sportsbook, casino, and social gaming platform is hiring a Principal Backend Engineer to serve as a hands-on technical leader within its Core engineering organisation. The position focuses on shaping architecture for complex distributed systems, partnering with product and engineering leadership, and multiplying impact through mentorship of senior engineers.

Responsibilities - Act as a technical point of contact for various stakeholders while remaining hands-on in both coding and architecture. - Partner with Engineering and Product leadership to shape roadmaps and make high-quality trade-offs that maximise business and customer impact. - Lead and influence architectural direction for the most complex systems, ensuring cohesive and scalable designs. - Set and uphold a high bar for technical excellence across the team, driving improvements in quality, readability, and scalability. - Proactively mentor, sponsor, and develop senior engineers; lead through code, design reviews, and technical mentorship without direct authority. - Spot and resolve cross-team technical dependencies before they become blockers, and champion the adoption of AI-assisted development practices across the team.

Requirements - Demonstrable experience operating at staff or principal level. - Deep backend engineering expertise with a track record of designing and building distributed systems at scale. - Strong technical judgment that earns trust from peers. - Experience with Java is a strong advantage; depth of backend systems thinking is more important than any specific language. - Solid understanding of Core account infrastructure and geolocation flows. - Strong written and verbal communication, with the ability to make complex technical decisions legible to non-technical stakeholders. - Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, or Cursor, and a track record of championing AI-assisted practices while understanding their limitations. - Degree in computer science, a related field, or equivalent work experience (10+ years).

Benefits and work setup - Competitive pay and benefits package. - Flexible vacation allowance and flexible work-from-home or office hours. - Startup culture backed by a secure, established brand, with the opportunity to build products used by millions.