When being there means everything, we make sure you never miss a moment.
The Role
Design and maintain scalable backend systems for ticketing, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and mentor engineers to improve system reliability and performance.
Summary Generated by Built In
Are you passionate about building systems that make unforgettable fan experiences possible? Join us as a Senior Software Engineer on our Ticketing team and help evolve the technology that powers live event access across high school and youth sports. You’ll design and deliver scalable backend systems that process millions of tickets annually, ensure smooth game-day experiences, and empower schools to focus on what matters most—the players, the fans, and the moments that bring them together.
As a Senior Engineer, you’ll own key backend services, APIs, and integrations that power our ticketing ecosystem. You’ll work across our Java microservices, contribute to our core APIs, and collaborate closely with product, payments, and data teams to drive reliability, scale, and performance. From evolving our data models and event flows to integrating with Stripe for secure, seamless payments, you’ll play a critical role in maturing a platform trusted by thousands of schools nationwide.
The outcomes you’ll deliver:
· Service reliability and scale: Design and maintain backend systems that handle high-volume, low-latency ticket transactions—especially under peak Friday-night traffic.
· Business impact: Drive measurable improvements in key metrics, including ticketing revenue, retention, and the golden metrics of our ticketing services
· Technical maturity: Advance our data and service architectures to integrate more deeply with other PlayOn products—streaming, fundraising, concessions, and more.
· Operational excellence: Ensure our systems are observable, well-instrumented, and resilient, with well-defined error budgets.
· Team growth: Mentor other engineers, raise the quality bar through reviews, documentation, and process improvements, and help shape the future of ticketing at PlayOn.
In this role, you can expect to
- Design, implement, and operate APIs and microservices that power ticket creation, checkout, redemption, and reporting.
- Integrate with Stripe and other third-party systems to enable secure, scalable payments, redemptions, and refunds.
- Contribute to architectural decisions, RFCs, and design reviews for both new and existing services.
- Collaborate with data, cloud engineering, QA, and product teams to deliver robust, high-quality features.
- Identify and eliminate bottlenecks through performance tuning, load testing, and data-driven scaling.
- Mentor 3–4 full-time engineers and several contractors, helping guide technical direction and development best practices.
- Participate in interviews, refine coding standards, and strengthen our engineering culture.
To thrive in this role, you have
- 5–8 years of professional software engineering experience, including designing and maintaining backend systems at scale.
- Strong skills in Java and familiarity with PostgreSQL or other relational databases. Experience with Go, TypeScript or Python is a plus.
- Experience with AWS services such as CloudFront, RDS, S3, EKS/ECS, SQS/SNS, and familiarity with event streaming tools like Kafka.
- Deep understanding of API design, microservices architecture, and distributed systems.
- Solid understanding of observability, monitoring, alerting, and incident management.
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills—you thrive in cross-functional environments with product, design, and operations.
- A passion for reliable systems, clean code, and mentoring others.
- Experience integrating with Stripe or similar payment platforms preferred.
- Familiarity with modern data pipelines and orchestration tools (e.g. Snowflake, Tinybird, Estuary, Dagster) preferred.
How You Play
- Ownership over Participation- You take responsibility for achieving holistic outcomes, prioritize key objectives, and adapt quickly when situations require a different approach. You follow through even against the toughest challenges.
- Team over Stars- You are a bridge builder, establishing processes and relationships with teams outside your own. You work to rally around common goals, find win-win solutions, compromise when necessary, and help others succeed.
- Growth over Comfort- You are driven by a desire to grow and actively seek opportunities to expand your comfort zone, skills, and confidence. You embrace new challenges with curiosity, accepting discomfort and failure as opportunities to learn.
- Fairness over Popularity- You approach decisions with a scientist’s mindset, challenging your assumptions and remaining objective. You consider long-term impact rather than relying on short-term gains, proactively seek others’ perspectives, and manage emotions in decision-making.
Company Overview
PlayOn is a dynamic growth-stage company dedicated to championing the spirit of play in the high school space. Backed by KKR, our family of brands—including GoFan, NFHS Network, and MaxPreps—empowers schools with innovative solutions and exceptional service. Our fan engagement platform is the only one that offers event ticketing, streaming, fundraising, concessions, merchandise sales, and website management in one place. We save administrators time so they can focus on what truly matters: supporting the students, staff, and fans who bring their programs to life.
Trusted by thousands of schools across the country, we're here to help create more instant replays, hold-your-breath moments, last-minute comebacks, and games you want to watch over and over again.
When being there means everything, we make sure you never miss a moment.
Why you’ll love working at PlayOn
Product, potential, and people. We’re a leader in the high school event space, constantly evolving our product to meet the needs of administrators. We focus on solving real challenges, learning quickly, and creating impactful solutions.
This is a growth-stage company, meaning your contributions have real impact. You’ll have opportunities to grow your skills, tackle meaningful problems, and make a difference in the lives of schools and the students and fans they serve.
Our culture is built on accountability, collaboration, growth, and fairness. We don’t just show up—we show up for each other. Everyone wears the same jersey, and we play hard, make the extra pass, and cheer one another on. Losses teach us, challenges motivate us, and persistence drives us forward. We value integrity over shortcuts, choosing to do what’s right even when it’s hard. Together, we strive to be better every day—because we know that’s how we win as a team.
The Benefits We Offer
Multiple medical insurance plans to choose from
Dental, vision life and disability insurance
Employee Emergency Fund
Company equity (stock options)
Open PTO policy
401K plan with company match
Hybrid/flexible work environment
Note: Must be a full-time employee to participate in the company’s employee health benefit plan. Part-time employees and interns are not eligible to participate.
Top Skills
AWS
Cloudfront
Dagster
Ecs
Eks
Estuary
Go
Java
Kafka
Postgres
Python
Rds
S3
Snowflake
Sns
Sqs
Stripe
Tinybird
Typescript
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The Company
What We Do
PlayOn is the all-in-one fan engagement platform for schools. Backed by KKR, our family of brands—including GoFan, NFHS Network, and MaxPreps—empowers schools with innovative solutions and exceptional service. We save administrators time so they can focus on what truly matters: supporting the students, staff, and fans who bring their programs to life.
Trusted by thousands of schools across the country, we're here to help create more instant replays, hold-your-breath moments, last-minute comebacks, and games you want to watch over and over again.
Why Work With Us
Product, potential, and people. We’re a leader in the high school event space, constantly evolving our product to meet the needs of administrators. We focus on solving real challenges, learning quickly, and creating impactful solutions. This is a growth-stage company, meaning your contributions have real impact.
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