Software Architect

DraftKings is seeking a Software Architect to design and scale the systems that power world-class digital experiences. This role involves shaping architectural decisions while staying close to the code, ensuring platforms are resilient, performant, and built to evolve. The architect will work across Engineering, Product, Infrastructure, and Platform teams to influence how distributed systems are approached at scale and elevate technical standards across the organisation.

In this role, the Software Architect will take technical ownership of the DKExchange domain, which includes market data, order entry and matching, request-for-quote trading, clearing, and settlement. The role requires building and owning AI tooling for the domain, such as agents and automated workflows, to handle repetitive analysis, monitoring, and drafting work, allowing for more focus on judgment calls.

• Define and evolve architectural solutions that improve system performance, scalability, reliability, and day-to-day operations.
• Own the technical roadmap for the exchange, and produce the architecture and design for every major initiative in the domain.
• Maintain the shared foundations - the core patterns, system boundaries, and data contracts that every team builds on, documented clearly enough that both people and AI tools can work from them.
• Drive consistency in the technologies and patterns used across the exchange's services.
• Partner closely with Product, Infrastructure, Platform and partner engineering teams - including brokers, market makers and clearing partners - to build good architectural thinking into planning, design, and delivery.
• Contribute hands-on to critical work: prototypes, proofs of concept, and production systems that show what scalable, maintainable design looks like.
• Set and publish the performance and reliability targets for the domain, and lead the load and resilience testing that proves we can meet them before peak events.
• Guide teams in using proven distributed system patterns, so fault tolerance, observability and operational readiness are built in from day one.
• Own the operational health of the exchange, using automation and AI tooling to catch problems early and shift from reacting to incidents toward preventing them.
• Bring architectural expertise to incidents, help drive resolution, and turn what is learned into fixes that stop the same class of failure recurring.
• Keep an eye on cost, and find and pursue efficiency opportunities as the platform grows.
• Give thoughtful design reviews and technical guidance that raise the bar across the team, using automated checks for mechanical issues so review conversations focus on trade-offs.
• Mentor engineers - on architecture, and on how to work effectively with AI tools in their own day-to-day.
• Look for where AI can genuinely create leverage in the domain, treat it as a real option alongside traditional approaches, and measure adoption by results: faster delivery, fewer defects, lower cost, new capability.
• Set sensible guardrails for AI-assisted work - quality checks, boundary validation, and standards that keep things coherent without slowing teams down.
• Work with engineering leaders to keep architectural decisions aligned with business priorities and long-term platform strategy.

• Professional software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and evolving large-scale distributed systems in production (required)
• Experience with fast, high-volume transactional or event-driven systems where getting the order and the outcome exactly right matters as much as speed (required)
• Background in exchanges, trading, payments or other financial systems is a strong advantage (preferred)
• Extensive knowledge of messaging and streaming systems; hands-on expertise with Kafka is a strong advantage (preferred)
• A solid grasp of how to manage state across a distributed system - how to split and shard data, when to keep it in memory versus a durable store, and the consistency trade-offs involved (required)
• Proven understanding of microservices architecture, including containerization and orchestration (required)
• Comfort working across more than one language stack, as our services are mostly Go and .NET/C# (required)
• Familiarity with the protocols and contract-first design this domain runs on - FIX, gRPC and Protobuf - and experience integrating with third-party systems you don't control directly (required)
• Working knowledge of relational and NoSQL databases, tradeoffs and advantages based on the use case (required)
• Proficiency with modern development practices, including continuous integration and delivery, infrastructure as code, and observability tooling; comfort running load tests and building capacity projections (required)
• Real, practical experience using AI tools on production work - coding assistants, agents, automated review and analysis - not just experimentation (required)
• A practical view of the economics - able to weigh an AI-based approach against building or buying as part of normal technical decision-making (required)
• Exposure to building software in a regulated environment: auditability, data sensitivity, and designing for compliance (required)
• Clear, structured communication, with the ability to document decisions and influence both technical and non-technical audiences, including internal and external engineering teams, and other stakeholders (required)
• A genuine interest in mentoring engineers, giving useful design feedback, and continuously raising engineering standards (required)

• Comprehensive health benefits, including various medical plans, dental, and vision
• Wellbeing program including free therapy sessions with Lyra Mental Health Solution, Lyra Employee Assistance Program, the Calm App, and Virtual Yoga Classes
• 14 weeks of 100% paid parental leave to all global team members and workplace lactation support
• Partnership with Care.com for childcare support for US employees
• Family planning benefits including support for adoption, surrogacy, and fertility treatments
• Flexible PTO for US employees
• Pet insurance
• Gym reimbursement
• Financial planning support including 401(k) matching and Origin Financial
• Commuter benefits
• Tuition reimbursement program

DraftKings Inc. is a leading American digital sports entertainment and gaming company, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 2012, it started in daily fantasy sports and has grown into one of the largest US online sportsbook and iGaming operators. The company offers mobile sports betting, online casino and daily fantasy contests across regulated North American markets. DraftKings is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange and employs several thousand people.

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