We are partnering with a global sports media and sports betting technology company to appoint a Senior Java Backend Engineer for their engineering hub in Cape Town. This team builds and maintains high-performance gaming and sports platforms used by millions of customers worldwide.
Reporting into the engineering leadership team, this is a hands-on role focused on designing and delivering scalable backend services that power real-time betting, media, and sports products.
This opportunity is ideal for a senior level backend engineer who enjoys solving complex system challenges, working with high-throughput distributed systems, and owning features from design through to production.
What You Will Do:
As a Senior Java Backend Engineer, you will play a key role in designing and delivering reliable, scalable backend services within a modern engineering environment.
- Design and build scalable backend services using Java and the Spring ecosystem
- Own end-to-end feature delivery from architecture and development through deployment and optimisation
- Develop high-throughput, low-latency systems supporting real-time sports betting and media platforms
- Write clean, well-tested, production-ready code and contribute to maintaining high engineering standards through code reviews and design discussions
- Collaborate closely with Product Managers and fellow engineers to shape technical solutions
- Design and optimise relational data models and write efficient SQL queries
- Manage database schema changes and migrations while maintaining production stability
- Contribute to improvements in developer experience including tooling, pipelines, observability, and performance
- Work with event-driven and message-based systems using technologies such as Kafka and RabbitMQ
- Use modern development tools and AI assistants (such as Copilot) pragmatically to improve development efficiency
- Participate in Agile delivery processes including sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives
All About You:
We are looking for a technically strong Senior Backend Engineer with deep experience in Java and modern backend architecture.
- Strong experience building enterprise-grade Java applications
- Deep hands-on experience with the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Cloud, Spring Security)
- Experience designing scalable, maintainable, and observable backend systems
- Strong experience with relational databases and SQL optimisation
- Experience working with message queues or event-driven systems such as Kafka or RabbitMQ
- Experience using Git-based workflows including pull requests, branching strategies, and code reviews
- Experience collaborating within Agile development teams
- Ability to mentor other engineers and contribute to raising engineering standards
- Strong problem-solving mindset with the ability to evaluate trade-offs in system design
Nice to Have:
- Experience in iGaming, sports betting, fintech, or other regulated high-scale industries
- Experience with cloud platforms, particularly GCP
- Experience working with Docker and CI/CD pipelines
- Exposure to frontend frameworks such as Vue.js or Angular
- Experience with performance tuning, distributed systems, or event-driven architecture
- Experience improving developer tooling, observability, or platform engineering capabilities
Tech Stack
- Backend: Java, Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Cloud, Spring Security, AMQP
- Databases: MySQL, MongoDB
- Messaging: Kafka, RabbitMQ
- Cloud: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Frontend (exposure): Vue.js, Angular
- Testing & APIs: Cypress, Postman
- Version Control: GitHub
- IDE: IntelliJ Ultimate
- Containers & CI/CD: Docker and modern deployment pipelines
Additional Information
- Location: Cape Town, South Africa
- 21 days annual leave
- Discovery Medical Aid
- Discretionary company performance bonus
- Opportunity to work on globally scaled sports betting and gaming platforms
- Collaborative engineering culture focused on technical excellence and delivery
If you are a Senior Java Engineer looking to build high-scale platforms within the sports and gaming technology space, we would love to hear from you.