Lead Backend Software Engineer

Location: Philadelphia, PA / Northern New Jersey / New York, NY (Remote, US) Job Type: Remote (US), within the Philadelphia to New York City corridor, with regular in-person collaboration in Philadelphia. Occasional international travel to meet the distributed engineering team. About Xpoint: Xpoint builds the geolocation compliance layer for regulated online sports betting and gaming. Before an operator can accept a wager, they must prove the player is physically where the law says they must be, and prove it to a regulator, on demand. That is the problem we solve, in real time, at scale, for some of the largest betting operators in the US and internationally. It is a genuinely hard engineering problem, and an unusually interesting one: Every request is a decision, not a lookup. We fuse GPS, Wi-Fi, network, and device-integrity signals into a single allow/deny call under a hard latency budget, at volumes that spike significantly around live sports. The problem is adversarial. People actively try to defeat us through spoofed locations, VPNs and proxies, remote desktops, virtualized devices, and tampered attestation. The work sits at the intersection of distributed systems, fraud detection, and security engineering. Every decision must be explainable. Our releases are filed with state gaming regulators before they can reach production. That raises the bar for correctness, traceability, and testing in a way that most consumer engineering never has to meet. We’re small enough that your decisions have a real impact. Xpoint is gaining market share by building better technology. You’ll be one of a handful of people helping set the direction of our backend platform, with direct access to the executives making decisions about what we build. Job Summary: Xpoint is seeking a Lead Backend Software Engineer to own the architecture, quality, and delivery of our core backend platform. This includes the Java services that process location checks, run decision and fraud rules, and return results in milliseconds. This is a hands-on engineering role, with most of your time spent writing, reviewing, and debugging production code. As the Lead, you’ll help set the technical direction, maintain high standards through code review, and mentor backend engineers by working alongside them rather than managing them. You’ll also serve as the senior backend engineer in the U.S. time zone, partnering directly with Product, QA, SRE, and Compliance to move work from planning through production. How We Work - Remote and Distributed: You will work remotely in the U.S. Most of the backend team you lead sits roughly 8 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern, with the rest of Engineering, QA, and Product spread across several countries. Because there are only a couple of hours of live overlap on a typical day, strong written communication and the ability to work effectively in a distributed environment are essential. This means: Written communication is key. You’ll create clear specifications, tickets, review comments, and decisions that allow work to move forward across time zones. You’ll anticipate questions and potential blockers so the team can continue making progress outside of U.S. working hours. Live overlap will be focused on conversations that benefit most from real-time collaboration, including technical discussions, escalations, and mentoring. You’ll travel internationally a few times each year for team planning, onboarding, and team building. You’ll also travel regularly to Philadelphia for in-person working sessions with U.S.-based leadership, Product, and Commercial teams. AI-Forward By Default: We expect our engineers, especially our leads, to be comfortable using modern AI tools as part of their daily work. This includes AI-assisted development, code review, test generation, working through unfamiliar code, drafting specifications, summarizing incidents, and accelerating research. Just as important is knowing when and how to use these tools effectively. You’ll be expected to review AI-generated work with the same rigor as human-generated work, understand where AI can and cannot be trusted, and use sound judgment when handling data. As a Lead, you’ll also help establish best practices for how the team uses AI to improve efficiency and quality.AI fluency is a core requirement for this role and will be assessed during the interview process. Operating Principles: At Xpoint we operate under eight core principles that shape our culture and our results. We value accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement, and we expect engineers to own their product in production. The job doesn't end when the code is committed. As a Lead Backend Software Engineer, you will exemplify these principles and hold your team to them. Job Responsibilities: Own the technical direction, architecture, quality, and delivery of Xpoint’s core backend platform, including documenting key architectural decisions and rationale. Lead and mentor a distributed team of backend engineers through hands-on development, code review, and technical guidance. Design, develop, test, and maintain high-performance, scalable, and secure Java services using strong engineering and design practices. Establish and uphold standards for code quality, testing, documentation, observability, and maintainability. Own backend services in production, including performance optimization, on-call participation, incident response, and root-cause resolution. Partner with Product, QA, SRE, Compliance, and other stakeholders to define requirements, manage customer and rollout impacts, and deliver reliable production releases. Ensure releases meet regulatory and compliance requirements, including appropriate testing, documentation, change controls, and evidence requirements. Drive effective async collaboration across the distributed organization, clearly communicating technical decisions, progress, risks, and recommended solutions. Use modern AI development tools to improve engineering efficiency and quality while establishing appropriate standards and guardrails for their use. Stay current with relevant Java, cloud, and AI technologies and identify opportunities to improve Xpoint’s engineering practices. Job Requirements: Required: Senior-level backend engineering experience with ownership of architecture and production systems Deep Java and Spring/Spring Boot expertise, including REST APIs and microservices Experience building and operating low-latency, high-throughput, mission-critical systems: capacity planning, load testing, rate limiting, connection and thread management, and diagnosing latency at the tail rather than the mean Strong cloud infrastructure experience, including containers, orchestration, multi-region and multi-tenant environments Experience with NoSQL data modeling, streaming and messaging/queueing technologies Strong knowledge of observability, system reliability, performance optimization and production troubleshooting Security-conscious engineering experience, including TLS, token management, certificate validation and request/response signing Strong testing practices across units, integration and automated regression testing, plus modern CI/CD and Git workflows, including branching strategy, release cutting and merge discipline Fluency with modern AI development tools, including the ability to validate, review and override AI-generated work Strong ownership mindset with the ability to troubleshoot across systems and drive issues through root cause and resolution Excellent written communication and demonstrated technical leadership through mentoring, code review and cross-functional collaboration Preferred: Experience with real-time stream processing, fraud detection, anti-abuse, device integrity or trust & safety systems Familiarity with geospatial technologies, positioning systems and boundary logic Experience backtesting rules or models against historical production data Experience in regulated or audited environments iGaming or sports betting industry experience Experience supporting mobile SDK-facing backends and device attestation Experience building AI-powered product features Start-up experience and comfort operating in a fast-moving environment Our Stack: Here’s what you’d be working with: Java and Spring Boot on AWS, across multiple regions and tenants. Kubernetes and Docker, with horizontal and node autoscaling. DynamoDB, Kinesis, Firehose, Kafka and SQS. Apache Flink for real-time rules. Athena, Glue, OpenSearch and Airflow on the data side. OpenTelemetry, Prometheus and Grafana for observability, with Sentry and PagerDuty. GitLab for source control and CI/CD. Benefits Package: Competitive, people-first benefits designed to support your health, financial future, and work-life balance. Xpoint is committed to investing in employees and their families with a comprehensive U.S. benefits package, including: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance100% employer-paid employee health premiums50% employer-paid premiums for eligible dependents3 weeks of paid vacation starting in the first yearPaid sick time and company holidays401(k) retirement plan with strong company match100% company-paid life insurance, AD&D, and short-term disability