--- title: 'Senior / Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Picks - DFS & Prediction Markets) at Sleeper' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-software-engineer-backend-picks-dfs-prediction-markets-sleeper-san-tzdyewcr7nrz' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-16' --- # Senior / Staff Software Engineer, Backend (Picks - DFS & Prediction Markets) at Sleeper - **Company:** Sleeper - **Location:** San Francisco, CA / New York, NY - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-09-15 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sleeper/45639b5d-7598-48af-ba3f-5420faae8496 ## Job description ## 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, we’re redefining how sports fans engage—whether it’s through season-long leagues, pick’em 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, we're building the future of sports engagement. ## About the Role We're hiring Senior and Staff Backend Engineers for Sleeper Picks, our real-money product. Picks is two games sharing one wallet and one user: daily fantasy sports, where users pick player stat lines over or under a projection, and prediction markets, where they take positions on game and team outcomes at prices that move right up to the whistle. Real money changes the engineering. Prices move in real time, entries surge before games start, and everything has to settle correctly the moment a game goes final. A stale price or a ledger that doesn't reconcile isn't a bug — it's a trust and compliance problem. The surface area is wide and you can touch any of it: contests and entries, pricing and market data, risk and exposure, settlement, wallet and payments, eligibility and compliance. You'll own systems and features end to end: the data model, the service behind it, and the API contract with our mobile and web teams, working directly with designers. Engineers make product decisions here, not just implement them. ## What You’ll Do - Build and own core Picks systems end to end — contest and entry lifecycle, pricing and market data, settlement and grading, wallet and ledger, eligibility and compliance. - Make real money correct: reconciliation, auditability, and settlement logic that is right the first time. - Handle real-time at scale: continuously moving prices and positions, entry surges before games start, and settlement across every game on the slate. - Partner with our risk and trading team on exposure management and the internal tooling they need. - Integrate with third-party projection, market, and payments providers, and design for their failures as well as ours. - Ship features end to end with designers and our mobile and web engineers, from a rough idea to something in users' hands. - At Staff: own the architecture of the systems you work in, raise the bar through design and code review, and help other engineers ship at scale. ## Who You Are - 5+ years of backend engineering. For Staff, 8+ years and a track record of owning the architecture of systems at this scale. - You've built and operated consumer products with millions of users, and you understand what your code does in production at that scale. - You've shipped features end to end — not only infrastructure. - You've worked on systems where being wrong costs money — payments, trading, marketplaces, ledgers, or real-money gaming — or you can show the same rigor from somewhere else. - Deep in distributed systems: data modeling, caching, queues, and the correctness questions that come with real-time updates and concurrent writes. - Strong in at least one backend language — Elixir, Go, Java, Python, Rust, Node, or similar. - You can go deep on your own work: what you decided, what you'd do differently, and where your contribution ended and the team's began. - You're a sports fan. Best case, you play DFS, use a sportsbook, or trade prediction markets — and you have opinions about how they should work. - Based in the San Francisco Bay Area or New York City, working hybrid. 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 – We’re a team of builders, thinkers, and sports lovers who value humility, collaboration, and having fun along the way. ## What We Offer - Competitive salary $180,000–$300,000/year (level and base set by experience; not inclusive of stock options and benefits) - Equity - Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance - 401(k) - Generous PTO and a hybrid work policy (San Francisco Bay Area or New York City) - 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 result. In 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 ($180,000 to $300,000 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 Company’s career webpage as a result of your disability. You may request reasonable accommodations by sending an email to jobs@sleeper.app. Headquartered in Las Vegas, NV, Sleeper is backed by Silicon Valley’s top investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Expa. To learn more, visit us online at:[www.sleeper.com](http://www.sleeper.com) ## About Sleeper ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Sleeper is a mobile-first social fantasy sports platform that connects friends through games like fantasy football, basketball, daily fantasy sports, and pick’em contests. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series A, total funding $67.3M) - **Headquarters**: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (with additional offices in San Francisco, CA) - **Founded**: 2014 - **Founders**: Henry Leung and Ken Wang ## Core Business - **Primary industries**: Spectator Sports / Fantasy Sports / Mobile Gaming - **Target customers**: B2C – sports fans, casual to hardcore fantasy players (primarily in the US, expanding globally) - **Mission statement**: "Connect people over sports. We're building a digital playground for sports fans and their friends to hang out together." ## Products & Services - **Fantasy Football**: Traditional redraft, keeper, dynasty, and Chopped Leagues (weekly eliminations). Mobile and web-based SaaS. - **Fantasy Basketball**: Full season and daily fantasy basketball leagues with live scoring. - **Fantasy Esports**: Leagues for esports titles. - **Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS)**: Pick’em contests, survivor pools, bracket challenges. - **Fantasy Soccer (EPL, La Liga, etc.)**: Season-long and daily formats. - **Sleeper PICKS**: A simplified pick’em game where users pick winners each week (max payout 1000x). - **Bracket Mania**: March Madness bracket challenge. - **AI Content Creator (Contract)**: Product/service for content generation (noted in job postings). ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not disclosed (private company) - **Key Metric – Total Funding**: $67.3M across 6 rounds (Angel, Seed rounds, Series A led by General Catalyst, Venture round) - **Key Metric – Annual Revenue**: ~$2.5M (LinkedIn estimate) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: General Catalyst (Series A lead), Birchmere Ventures (Seed lead), and several angel investors. - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount grew ~40% YoY to 171 employees. - Monthly website traffic 1.8M visits, +7.1% monthly, +1.2% yearly. - Named #1 overall Sports App on iOS (2024). - Expanded into more sports (UFC, F1, Tennis, Golf) via curated content roles. - Partnership with influencer Donald “Deestroying” De La Haye. - Brand refresh and new logo announced in 2024. ## Competitive Advantages - **Social-first design**: Sleeper emphasizes group chats, live reactions, and easy friend invites – differentiating from more transactional fantasy platforms like ESPN or Yahoo. - **Innovative game modes**: Chopped Leagues, Survivor, Pick’em, and Bracket Mania keep engagement high year-round. - **Mobile-native UX**: Built from the ground up for smartphones, with a modern UI and fast performance. - **Strong community**: 19.6K LinkedIn followers, high social media engagement, and a loyal user base (bounce rate only 0.3%, 8.6 pages per visit). - **Multi-sport coverage**: Unlike many fantasy apps that focus only on football or basketball, Sleeper supports NFL, NBA, EPL, La Liga, esports, and more. ## Strategic Focus - **Content & creator partnerships**: Hiring AI content creators and sports content curators to build original media (e.g., “Kickin' It With Dee” show). - **International growth**: Expanding into markets like Canada, UK, Spain, Portugal, and Indonesia. - **Risk & trading (DFS)**: Opening Data Scientist and Software Engineer roles specifically targeting daily fantasy sports risk management and trading. - **Product design innovation**: Active hiring for Sr. Product Designer and User Research Intern – indicates focus on user experience research and iteration. ## Why Work Here - **Hybrid/Remote flexibility**: Most roles are listed as Hybrid (in-office for Las Vegas or San Francisco) with some fully remote options. Two physical office locations: Las Vegas HQ and San Francisco. - **Culture highlights**: Mission-driven (“connect people over sports”), fast-growing startup environment, strong emphasis on engineering quality and product design. - **Notable perks (from Built In)**: Not explicitly detailed in the search results, but typical startup perks include equity, health benefits, and free snacks/events; the company’s career page emphasizes making an impact. - **Engineering culture**: 18 technical employees (7% of workforce), tech stack includes TypeScript, Buildkite, Retool. Hiring for Senior Frontend (Mobile), Senior Backend, and Staff Backend roles. - **Recruiting warning**: Sleeper actively warns about scams – they never ask for money and always conduct interviews via Google Meet. ## Sources 1. [Sleeper Company Page](https://sleeper.com/company) 2. [Sleeper Jobs (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sleeper) 3. [Built In – Sleeper Careers](https://builtin.com/company/sleeper) 4. [LinkedIn – Sleeper](https://gt.linkedin.com/company/sleeperhq) 5. 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