Backend Engineer

About Us

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. 

About the Team

Fanatics Live is a community-driven livestream commerce platform where fans and collectors participate in creator-led live shopping experiences centered around trading cards, collectibles, memorabilia, and exclusive drops. The platform combines commerce, content, and community into a unified collector experience supporting millions of fans globally.

As part of the broader Fanatics ecosystem, Fanatics Live operates with the agility of a startup while leveraging Fanatics’ global reach, licensing partnerships, and technology platform. Engineers at Fanatics Live build highly interactive, real-time systems that power livestream commerce, marketplace transactions, creator tooling, and collector engagement experiences at scale.

Role Summary

We are seeking a Backend Software Engineer to help build and scale the next generation of services powering Fanatics Live globally. This engineer will contribute to backend systems supporting livestream commerce, real-time purchasing experiences, payments, notifications, inventory orchestration, seller tooling, and platform reliability.

This role is ideal for an engineer who can independently deliver well-scoped technical solutions, collaborate across product and infrastructure teams, and contribute to scalable distributed systems in a fast-moving environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs supporting Fanatics Live products and operations
• Develop reliable systems for real-time commerce, livestream interactions, order processing, inventory management, and event-driven workflows
• Contribute to system design discussions and technical planning across multiple engineering initiatives
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested production code following engineering best practices
• Partner closely with Product, Mobile, Web, Data, Infrastructure, and Operations teams to deliver customer-facing capabilities
• Optimize application performance, resiliency, observability, and scalability for global traffic patterns
• Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and operational improvements
• Contribute to continuous improvement of development workflows, deployment pipelines, and engineering standards
• Support technical documentation and knowledge sharing across the organization
• Mentor junior engineers through collaboration, code reviews, and technical guidance

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience with backend systems
• Strong proficiency in Python, Go, Java, Elixir, or similar backend programming languages
• Experience designing and building RESTful APIs and distributed systems
• Strong understanding of relational and NoSQL databases, including schema design and optimization
• Experience with cloud-native development and AWS services
• Familiarity with asynchronous processing, event-driven architectures, and message queues
• Experience with monitoring, logging, and observability tooling
• Understanding of secure software development practices
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting high-scale consumer-facing applications
• Experience with livestreaming, marketplace, e-commerce, or real-time systems
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, and infrastructure-as-code tooling
• Exposure to GraphQL, WebSockets, or real-time event platforms
• Passion for sports, collectibles, creator ecosystems, or fan communities

Code Writing Contribution

This role requires strong hands-on coding capability. Engineers at this level are expected to independently deliver production-quality backend services, contribute to system design and implementation, and support operational excellence through maintainable, scalable code aligned with role expectations.

NYC Salary Range

$145,000 - $181,250 USD