Principal Backend Engineer – Promo

Stack

Responsibilities

• ▹Own backend technical direction for the Promos domain, aligned with shared platform, cloud, data and service standards
• ▹Partner with Principal and Staff Engineers and teams owning shared capabilities (identity, payments, compliance, messaging, platform services) while keeping clear ownership boundaries
• ▹Guide architecture evolution and modernization, balancing product delivery, technical debt, scalability and platform investment
• ▹Lead major restructuring work through planned iterative delivery: define the target end state, break initiatives into sequenced tickets, surface dependencies and risks, and provide credible delivery dates that are updated as evidence changes
• ▹Build scalable, reliable promotion lifecycle capabilities: configuration, eligibility, activation, state transitions, rewards, expiration, auditability, idempotency and recovery
• ▹Partner with Product, Mobile, Web, Back Office, Data and Operations to define service boundaries, API and event contracts, experimentation, success measures and operational controls
• ▹Design resilient services for high traffic and transaction volume, using appropriate data consistency, caching, asynchronous processing, rate controls and graceful degradation
• ▹Stay hands-on with the hardest problems, delegate effectively and correct work that is off course
• ▹Model a high bar for code review and advance standards for testing, API design, security, observability, performance, CI/CD, controlled rollout, data migration and production readiness
• ▹Lead diagnosis across services, APIs, databases, caches, queues and event streams using logs, traces and metrics, turning incidents into systemic improvements
• ▹Drive responsible adoption of AI-assisted development across discovery, implementation, testing, documentation, debugging and review, measuring impact on quality, speed and developer experience
• ▹Identify valuable product and operational uses for AI, assess feasibility and model risk, and establish guardrails
• ▹Act as a trusted technical advisor to Product and Engineering teams, identifying risks and opportunities early and driving decisions to closure
• ▹Mentor Senior and Staff Engineers and contribute to senior hiring, capability planning and career development
• ▹Resolve systemic risks, ownership gaps and missing capabilities by bringing the right people together

Requirements

• ▹Typically 10+ years of software engineering experience, including substantial experience designing and operating distributed backend systems
• ▹Degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent demonstrated experience
• ▹Deep expertise with Java, Spring and Spring Boot, with a record of establishing patterns and standards adopted by multiple teams
• ▹Strong AWS knowledge and experience building scalable, resilient applications across multiple regions and availability zones
• ▹Expertise with relational data systems such as PostgreSQL or CockroachDB: schema design, transactions, migrations, indexing, performance and consistency tradeoffs
• ▹Experience with streaming technologies such as Amazon Kinesis or Kafka and messaging systems such as SQS, RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ
• ▹Experience designing microservice and service-oriented architectures and operating containerized workloads with Docker and Kubernetes
• ▹Strong judgment around high-volume systems, concurrency, idempotency, caching, asynchronous workflows, failure recovery and backward-compatible API and event evolution
• ▹Strong engineering judgment across testing, observability, CI/CD, secure development, performance, privacy and production operations for business-critical systems
• ▹Hands-on fluency with AI-assisted development and a practical understanding of evaluation, hallucination risk, privacy, security and responsible human review
• ▹A record of shaping technical and product strategy, delivering ambiguous multi-team initiatives, communicating clearly with senior stakeholders and influencing outcomes without formal authority

Nice to have

• ▹Experience in sportsbook, casino, online gaming, fintech, banking or another regulated digital industry
• ▹Experience building promotion, loyalty, offer, reward, experimentation or customer engagement platforms
• ▹Experience scaling engineering through shared libraries, developer platforms, service templates, internal tooling or production AI practices

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹Competitive pay and benefits
• ▹Flexible vacation allowance
• ▹Flexible work from home or office hours
• ▹Startup culture backed by a secure, global brand
• ▹Opportunity to build products enjoyed by millions as part of a passionate team

About the company

Hard Rock Digital aims to become the best online sportsbook, casino and social gaming company in the world, building products for millions of consumers. It is rooted in the Hard Rock brand and the Seminole Tribe of Florida.