Software Engineer
Grandstand is hiring a Software Engineer to join the OpticOdds team. This high-scope technical role is responsible for shaping the strategy and architecture behind web and backend systems. The engineer will spend most of their time designing, building, and shipping directly, while also driving the technical direction across teams and initiatives. The core of this role is leading through influence and strong technical judgment, with scope evolving based on the needs of the team. The engineer will partner closely with engineering, product, and leadership to ensure the right things are built the right way, and that the team moves fast enough to stay ahead.
As a Software Engineer, the individual will play a key role in maintaining the integrity and performance of OpticOdds' data platform. This role emphasizes engineering, building, monitoring, and improving the systems that power real-time data feeds and APIs, from the backend through to the user-facing product. The stack is polyglot, including a Python/Django API and a fleet of Go services sharing a high-throughput PostgreSQL database and a RabbitMQ-backed real-time pipeline, all running on Kubernetes, with a React/TypeScript frontend. The engineer will be expected to design and evolve these systems, making sound architectural trade-offs around scalability, latency, and reliability. At the same time, the engineer will act as a technical bridge to clients, helping them integrate smoothly and ensuring their needs are represented internally, which will take up about 25% of their time. The role is suited to someone who brings strong engineering fundamentals, is confident in debugging and designing complex distributed systems, and enjoys the challenge of working in real time with mission-critical data. The engineer will report to the Head of Engineering and collaborate with product and sales teams to ensure the platform remains the most reliable in the market.
- Build, maintain, and improve the Python and Go services that process and deliver real-time sports betting data.
- Design and evolve scalable, fault-tolerant services and data flows, weighing trade-offs around throughput, latency, consistency, and cost.
- Build and maintain user-facing features in the React/TypeScript application, surfacing real-time data in a fast, intuitive interface.
- Diagnose and optimize PostgreSQL query and indexing issues that affect latency and throughput at scale.
- Proactively monitor live feeds and message queues to ensure accuracy, consistency, and minimal latency.
- Debug and optimize API interactions, ensuring integrations are seamless and performant.
- Provide technical guidance to operators during integration, ensuring APIs are fully leveraged.
- Handle occasional after-hours issues with a focus on rapid resolution and root-cause prevention.
- Represent recurring client challenges to engineering and product, helping prioritise fixes and enhancements.
- Contribute to internal tooling and automation that reduce manual support and improve system reliability.
- 4–7 years of engineering experience, with a focus on data pipelines, real-time systems, or API-driven platforms (required).
- Strong skills in Python, with a proven ability to debug and optimise (required).
- Proficiency in Go for building and maintaining backend services (required).
- Frontend experience with React and TypeScript, building and maintaining production user-facing applications (required).
- Demonstrated experience designing distributed, real-time systems - comfortable reasoning about scalability, fault tolerance, and architectural trade-offs (required).
- Solid SQL / PostgreSQL fundamentals - comfortable reading query plans and reasoning about indexing and performance (required).
- Hands-on experience with API debugging (required).
- Familiarity with message queues (e.g., RabbitMQ/Kafka) and containerised deployments (Docker/Kubernetes) is a plus (nice-to-have).
- Sports and sports betting knowledge is required (required).
- Strong communication skills, with the ability to engage clients confidently while collaborating effectively across internal teams (required).
- Self-starter who thrives in dynamic, high-growth environments (required).
- Comprehensive private Healthcare Insurance
- Flexible work environment and home office available
- Home office allowance
- Gym & Leisure Allowance
- All the hardware and software you need to be successful
- Regular company events and social outings, activities, Spot Awards and a Monthly Social Club
- Access to courses for Personal and Career Development
- Company Paid Volunteer Day
Grandstand is a multi-award-winning performance marketing company and a leading provider of digital marketing services active exclusively in the online gambling industry. The Group has a workforce of more than 300 and operates from offices in Ireland, the United States and Malta. Through its proprietary technology platform, the Group publishes a portfolio of premier branded websites, including Gambling.com and Bookies.com. Founded in 2006, the Group owns and operates more than 50 websites in seven languages across 15 national markets covering all aspects of the online gambling industry, including iGaming and sports betting, and the fantasy sports industry. Grandstand is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker GRSD.