Senior Software Engineer, Ticketing

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 Play On 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 Play On.

• 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.

• 5–8 years of professional software engineering experience, including designing and maintaining backend systems at scale.
• Strong skills in Java and familiarity with Postgre
  
  SQL or other relational databases. Experience with Go, Type Script or Python is a plus.
• Experience with AWS services such as Cloud Front, 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.

• 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…