Senior Backend Engineer

About the role

The plays a critical role in the development and maintenance of the world's first real money gaming Super App, a platform integrating Picks, Social Sportsbook, Social Casino, and Arcade functionalities. You will own the server logic that processes bets from initial intake through to execution, ensuring the reliability and stability of the platform during high-traffic events. This position focuses exclusively on backend development with no frontend responsibilities, requiring coordination of Python-based tools and PHP services to support core operations. You will actively participate in solving deployment challenges associated with releasing new features to live users and millions of paying customers. A key responsibility involves designing intake pipelines that efficiently route user actions into the betting engine before they enter the review queue. Additionally, you will construct services using Laravel and Python to support internal tools for odds calculations and user history management. Collaboration with the data team is essential to validate the behavior of prediction markets prior to public launch. The role also involves shipping improvements to the social sportsbook while ensuring that the arcade functionality remains responsive for players.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Execute the responsibilities of the Senior Backend Engineer role as defined for Betr's real money gaming platform.
• Process bets through the server logic from intake to execution while contributing to the expansion of prediction markets within the application.
• Coordinate Python-based tools and PHP services to maintain the reliability and stability of the social sportsbook and casino during periods of high user traffic.
• Solve deployment challenges that arise when new features are released to live users across a global audience.
• Design intake pipelines that efficiently route user actions into the betting engine prior to entering the review queue.
• Construct services using Laravel and Python to support internal tools responsible for odds calculations and user history management.
• Collaborate with the data team to validate the behavior of prediction markets before they are launched to the public.
• Ship improvements to the social sportsbook while ensuring that the arcade functionality remains responsive for players.
• Partner with infrastructure colleagues to refine deployment procedures and minimize environment drift across production systems.
• Review database changes and query patterns to ensure the core business logic avoids race conditions and maintains integrity under load.
• Guide junior developers through code reviews that emphasize clarity, correctness, and operational safety in a high-stakes environment.
• Maintain deployment scripts to ensure platform uptime during the safe rollout of new application versions to production.
• Validate backend behaviors in collaboration with data teams to ensure prediction markets function correctly before release.
• Support the scaling efforts of one of the fastest-growing gaming brands that holds the distinction of being the most followed real money gaming brand on social media globally.

Requirements

• Bring a minimum of three years of professional experience building backend services using PHP in a production environment.
• Demonstrate a deep understanding of relational databases, including how indexes influence query speed and locking behavior under concurrent load.
• Possess a clear understanding of how HTTP requests traverse servers and how this flow dictates API design decisions for scalable systems.
• Show proficiency in reading and adjusting deployment configurations for web applications managed in cloud environments.
• Have experience working with queues and background jobs to manage long-running tasks outside of request cycles to maintain performance.
• Communicate complex technical decisions clearly in writing to ensure understanding across engineering, product, and data teams.
• Adhere to strict operational safety standards when reviewing code and deploying changes to live systems serving real money transactions.
• Apply logical rigor to database schema changes and query optimization to protect the integrity of betting operations and user data.

Nice to have

• While not mandatory, experience with Laravel and deploying applications within cloud environments is highly valued for this role.
• Familiarity with technologies such as MySQL, Redis, Kubernetes, and GitHub Actions as they relate to the Betr platform.

Practical notes

The compensation for this role is 180,000 USD per year. The position is based in Canada and requires full-time onsite engagement. The role involves close collaboration with cross-functional teams including data and infrastructure to maintain a high-performance gaming platform.