Principal Backend Software Engineer

iGaming: If it’s iGaming, we know a thing or two. At Light & Wonder, It’s all about the games, and our digital team leads the global iGaming market, providing jaw-dropping content and innovative software that powers the world's most successful online gaming providers. Position Summary Light & Wonder is the global leader in cross-platform games and entertainment. The company brings together 5,000 employees from six continents to connect content between land-based and digital channels with unmatched technology and distribution. Guided by a culture that values daring teamwork and creativity, Light & Wonder builds new worlds of play, developing game experiences loved by players around the globe. The company’s OpenGaming(tm) platform powers the largest digital-gaming network in the industry. Light & Wonder is committed to the highest standards of integrity, from promoting player responsibility to implementing sustainable practices. To learn more, visit lnw.com. We are looking for a Principal Back-End Software Engineer who is genuinely hands-on — someone who writes production code, participates in design sessions alongside our architecture teams, and can simultaneously guide a small group of talented developers toward consistent, high-quality delivery. This is not a purely managerial role: you will be expected to be in the code, lead by example, and bring practical engineering judgment to every discussion. You will operate at the intersection of individual contribution and technical leadership. You will partner closely with architects to shape system-level decisions while remaining the most knowledgeable voice in the room about what is actually happening in the codebase day to day. Responsibilities include: Hands-On Development Write, review, and own production-quality code as a day-to-day activity — this role maintains a meaningful individual-contributor output.Drive code quality through TDD, clean architecture principles, and rigorous code reviews.Set and enforce engineering standards across the team including CI/CD pipelines, branching strategies, and release practices. Architectural Collaboration Engage actively with solution and enterprise architects to shape backend architecture, API design, event-driven patterns, and cloud-native deployment strategies.Translate high-level architectural decisions into actionable technical designs the team can implement with confidence.Produce clear solution design documents, API specifications (OpenAPI/REST), and integration workflow diagrams.Champion microservices, event-driven, and clean/hexagonal architecture patterns where appropriate.Be familiar with SQL and noSQL Databases (Postgres and MongoDB) and have in-depth experience with high-volume transaction applications. Team Leadership Lead, mentor, and develop a small team of engineers — building capability, confidence, and a culture of technical excellence.Run Agile ceremonies: sprint planning, retrospectives, and backlog grooming; work closely with product and delivery stakeholders.Act as the primary technical escalation point within the team, unblocking engineers and resolving ambiguity quickly.Manage deliverables and coordinate with cross-functional teams including QA, infrastructure, security, and operations. Reliability & Observability Build and maintain observability tooling — dashboards, alerting, and runbooks — to ensure production health and fast incident response.Lead incident response, root cause analysis, and preventive improvements.Champion DevOps practices: infrastructure as code, automated deployments, and shift-left testing. Qualifications Experience & skills 10+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrable hands-on coding in recent roles.Proven track record leading small engineering teams (2–8 people) end-to-end from design to production.Strong backend engineering background: Java / Spring Boot, with modern cloud-native patterns.Practical experience with event-driven architectures and messaging systems (Apache Kafka, SQS/SNS, RabbitMQ).Cloud platform expertise: AWS (ECS/EKS, Postgres RDS, ElastiCache, network configuration).API design and security: REST, OpenAPI/Swagger, OAuth 2.0, JWT.Containerization and orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes.CI/CD pipelines: Jenkins, GitHub Actions.Observability tooling: Splunk, Grafana or equivalent.Strong communication skills; ability to produce design documents and engage non-technical stakeholders confidently.Experience in regulated or compliance-sensitive industries (iGaming, fintech, media, or similar) is advantageous. Nice to have Hands-on experience with WSO2 API Manager or similar API gateway / IAM platforms.Familiarity with PAM (Player Account Management) or iGaming platform concepts.Infrastructure-as-code with Terraform and Helm.AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Azure certifications, or Confluent Kafka certification. Additional Information Why would you enjoy working with us at Light & Wonder? Competitive benefits, an open and supportive environment as well as a modern and exciting workplace.The opportunity to interact with global teams on a regular basis and the possibility to switch teams and projects as you and our business continues to develop and grow.Exciting projects with opportunities for creating positive change to our game engineering ecosystem. And if that is not enough; you will get to enjoy a stunning work location and flexible working whilst we provide you with the guidance and development skills you need to progress quickly and enhance your career. Location Athens, Greece or Sofia, Bulgaria. This vacancy relates to one position that may be filled in either location. The vacancy will be closed once the position has been filled in one of the two countries.