Summary

Are you the type of person who lives for data, thrives in fast-paced environments, and loves getting things done? Do you geek out over sports, gaming, and Web3? If yes, we might just have your dream job waiting for you. We’re on the hunt for an 

AI Centric Staff Backend Engineer

 to help take our Digital Sports Collectibles team to the next level. In this founding‑level role, you’ll architect lightning‑fast, AI‑powered backend systems that make our Sports Collectibles products smarter, slicker, and ready for prime time—while laying the cultural and technical foundations for a team that will scale.

What you’ll do

1. Design & architect scalable, AI‑driven backend systems that power high‑performance user experiences and intelligent in‑product features across our flagship platforms.
2. Build and maintain robust APIs and micro‑services in Go (or similar performant languages) with an emphasis on reliability, security, developer ergonomics, and AI agent extensibility.
3. Develop production AI agents & services—from retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) chatbots to autonomous ops agents—that super‑charge our products and internal developer workflows.
4. Integrate blockchain technologies and handle high‑throughput data flows and transactions, leveraging AI models for anomaly detection, fraud prevention, and dynamic pricing.
5. Implement real‑time monitoring, alerting, and self‑healing mechanisms, using AI/ML observability tools to proactively surface performance bottlenecks and optimization opportunities.
6. Lead backend efforts across the entire development lifecycle—from strategic planning and technical design to hands‑on implementation, deployment, and iteration.
7. Collaborate with cross‑functional teams (frontend, mobile, product, data science & design) to ship end‑to‑end experiences that are both performant and delightful.
8. Oversee database design, management, and optimization (SQL, NoSQL, and vector databases) across multiple systems and services.
9. Document system architecture, APIs, and AI model behaviors for internal and external development stakeholders.
10. Champion secure and ethical AI practices—ensuring user data privacy, model governance, and transparent decision‑making.
11. Mentor and eventually manage engineers, growing into a leadership role as the team scales, fostering an inclusive, high‑performance engineering culture.
12. Influence technical and product strategy as a founding engineer, partnering with leadership to set vision, prioritize investments, and allocate resources.

About you

1. Backend engineering experience, including building production AI/ML systems or intelligent agents.
2. Proven ability to design and implement scalable, cloud‑native architectures in Go (or comparable languages) on AWS, GCP, or similar.
3. Deep understanding of API architecture, distributed systems, and database technologies (both relational, NoSQL, and vector search).
4. Track record of shipping AI‑enabled features—prompt engineering, fine‑tuning LLMs, integrating commercial or open‑source models, and using frameworks such as LangChain or Semantic Kernel.
5. Comfortable leading and eventually managing backend projects and small teams from concept to deployment.
6. Strong advocate for clean code, testability, observability, and best‑practice Git workflows (trunk‑based development, CI/CD).
7. Experience working in Agile, cross‑functional environments, delivering iteratively while maintaining a long‑term architectural vision.
8. Passionate about blockchain technology, gaming, redefining digital ownership—and excited by the intersection of AI and Web3.

Bonus points

1. Experience architecting and deploying cloud infrastructure with Terraform, Kubernetes, and service meshes.
2. Hands‑on background with smart contracts, NFTs, or zk‑based scaling solutions.
3. Built backend or AI tooling that substantially enhanced developer workflows or platform efficiency.
4. Contributions to open‑source AI frameworks, LLM orchestration libraries, or backend systems.
5. Prior experience at an early‑stage startup or as a founding engineer.

Skills

• API Integration
• AWS
• Machine Learning
• Software Engineering