Senior Backend Engineer

I am working with a leader in sports technology and helping them with a key hire for a company critical team (could call it their engine room...) They are looking for an experienced Senior Backend Engineer with a solid understanding in backend engineering (ideally C# but open to others), distributed systems, working in a data heavy environment and cloud. This is the team behind the world's largest library of sports video and AI-infused data, covering everything from schoolboy fixtures to professional leagues, across football, basketball, rugby, ice hockey, American football, baseball, softball and volleyball. Film gets organised and distributed within hours, tagged and tracked automatically, for every level of sport, everywhere in the world. That entire pipeline runs through one unified data platform: the Global Sports Library. Why this role matters This team is the backbone that connects identities, metadata and game context across every product in the business. Every player identity, every game moment, every stat and highlight gets resolved once, here, and consumed everywhere else. Get this right and it becomes a shared capability the whole ecosystem builds on, powering the experience for teams, athletes and fans worldwide. The team Small squad, real ownership (this hire takes a 3-person team to 4)You'll shape the technical direction of the GSL itself + play a key role in architecture/ tech decisionsSits inside one of the most technically respected engineering groups in the business What you'll actually do Own hard backend problems: data consistency, entity resolution, large-scale ingestion pipelines, scalability under real loadProvide technical leadership, decompose complex problems, set architectural direction, mentor through code review and pairingFocus on outcomes over output; collaborate across departments on what gets built nextParticipate properly in Scrum ceremonies and help shape team culture What they need A Senior Backend Engineer. Genuinely backend-first - Working with C#/.NET (JVM/Java background is a straightforward switch and genuinely welcomed)Real cloud experience (AWS preferred) with TDD and CI/CD as standard practiceDistributed systems experienceGraphQL, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, KubernetesSomeone who is comfortable holding architectural directionSomeone with experience working in a data heavy environment Nice to have, not required Video encoding or on-demand rendering at scale Role details Paying up to £105k + bonus + stockHybrid in London (2-3 days a week)Interview process will include a systems design interview