Staff Software Engineer – Backend

Location: Remote-friendly. Preference for SF Bay Area Los Angeles NYC or Pacific Northwest.

About Sleeper

Sleeper is on a mission to connect people over sports through games and community. As one of the fastest-growing platforms in the fantasy sports and real-money gaming space were redefining how sports fans engagewhether its through season-long leagues pickem contests or real-time interactions with friends.

Our team is lean passionate and product-driven. We obsess over user experience and believe that building delightful fast and reliable products is the best way to grow. Backed by some of the most respected investors in Silicon Valley including Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst were building the future of sports engagement.

About the Role

Were looking for a Staff Software Engineer - Backend to help us scale the core systems behind our fantasy sports and DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) this role youll drive architectural decisions build critical backend services and mentor fellow engineers as we scale to support tens of millions of passionate sports fans.

As a senior technical leader youll collaborate cross-functionally to bring innovative features to lifefrom real-time contest engines and game logic to personalized content and secure seamless payments. Youll be empowered to own major parts of the backend stack and help define what great looks like in terms of performance scalability and reliability at Sleeper.

What Youll Do

• Design and build core backend systems that power Sleepers games and real-time user experiencesfantasy contests Sleeper Picks user profiles leaderboards and more.

• Architect scalable distributed systems capable of handling millions of concurrent users with low latency and high availability.

• Lead backend initiatives from concept to deployment ensuring clean interfaces well-documented services and resilient infrastructure.

• Optimize system performance and proactively address bottlenecks through monitoring profiling and capacity planning.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with product design and frontend teams to deliver features that users love.

• Mentor engineers provide thoughtful code reviews and shape backend engineering best practices and standards.

• Drive innovation technical direction and team culture as a key engineering voice at the leadership level.

Who You Are

• 7 years of backend software engineering experience including experience in staff-level or tech lead roles.

• Proven ability to design and scale distributed systems that serve millions of users in real-time or gaming environments.

• Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g. Go Python Java) and an understanding of trade-offs between them.

• Deep knowledge of databases (both SQL and NoSQL) caching strategies and message queues (e.g. Kafka RabbitMQ Pub/Sub).

• Comfortable designing and maintaining RESTful and/or graphql APIs data models and internal tooling.

• Cloud experience (AWS GCP or similar) with familiarity with containers (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes a plus).

• Strong product mindsetyou care about the why not just the how and you build with users in mind.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills. You elevate your teammates and enjoy mentoring.

• Bonus: Passion for sports gaming or building multiplayer or real-time systems.

Why Join Sleeper

• Massive Impact Your work will touch millions of users and help shape the next generation of sports entertainment.

• High Ownership We trust our engineers to make high-leverage decisions and drive meaningful outcomes.

• Startup Agility Move fast ship often and see your work in the hands of users quickly.

• Culture-First Team Were a team of builders thinkers and sports lovers who value humility collaboration and having fun along the way.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary ($225000$300000/year not inclusive of stock options and benefits)

• Equity

• Comprehensive medical dental and vision insurance

• 401(k) with company matching

• Generous PTO and flexible remote work policy

• Opportunities for fast career growth in a high-impact role

• A small focused team where your contributions truly matter
  

Our Hiring Philosophy

Sleeper believes in quality over quantity and intentionally keeps our team small as a past roles we found it very hard to make a big impact when companies grow too large in size which has a detrimental effect on the product and the impact any single individual can have. Our team includes designers engineers product experts and finance & operation focused on one thing connecting people over sports. We believe in fair and equitable pay. Certain locations in the United States require job postings to include a reasonable estimate of the base salary range and/or a general description of benefits and other compensation applicable to the role.

Competitive salary plus benefits including Medical Dental PTO 401k. Please note that The salary range for this role ($225000 to $300000 per year salary) takes into account a wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The policy of Sleeper is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race color creed religion sex sexual orientation gender identity marital status citizenship status age national origin ancestry disability veteran status or any other legally protected status and to affirmatively seek to advance the principles of equal employment opportunity. Sleeper is committed to being an Equal Opportunity Employer and offers opportunities to all job seekers including job seekers with disabilities. If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran you may request a reasonable accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access the Companys career webpage as a result of your disability. You may request reasonable accommodations by sending an email to

Headquartered in Las Vegas NV Sleeper is backed by Silicon Valleys top investors including Andreessen Horowitz General Catalyst and Expa.

To learn more visit us online at:

Required Experience:

Staff IC