Senior Python Engineer

Fliff unpacks sports gaming into social, free-to-play games for all types of sports fans. We've built a social sports gaming experience that allows users to compete for leaderboard positioning, to achieve badges and build their status within the game.
We are pioneering play-for-fun sports gaming, with our flagship social sportsbook experience that includes sweepstakes promotions and loyalty rewards. We provide sports fans with fun, engaging, and free-to-play alternatives to real money gaming.
We are looking for a Senior Python Engineer to own, design, build, and maintain high-performance distributed backend systems serving millions of users. You will be accountable for end-to-end delivery of scalable, reliable, and low-latency solutions using Python, Django, and Kafka. This role will work closely with our team in Sofia, Bulgaria, and requires comfort collaborating and operating in EEST (Eastern European Time). What You’ll Do

• Take full ownership of backend services from design through deployment, maintenance, and continuous improvement
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable, high-performance distributed backend services using Python and Django
• Architect distributed systems to support millions of users with low latency and high availability
• Collaborate with product, frontend, and DevOps teams to ship reliable features on aggressive timelines
• Lead and mentor junior engineers through code reviews, architectural discussions, and knowledge sharing
• Own critical backend infrastructure components: APIs, data pipelines, message brokers (Kafka), caching
• Optimize systems for throughput, latency, fault tolerance, and resilience under heavy load
• Implement robust testing strategies: unit, integration, and performance tests
• Drive continuous improvement of development processes and system observability (monitoring, logging)
• Participate in on-call rotations and support production issues as needed

What We're Looking For:

• 5+ years of professional Python backend development experience with a proven track record of ownership and successful delivery
• Solid Django experience (not necessarily expert level), with asynchronous programming skills (asyncio)
• Production experience with Apache Kafka
• Strong experience with distributed systems (microservices or similar architecture)
• Experience deploying and managing containerized applications (Docker); Kubernetes experience is a plus
• Familiarity with any cloud provider (AWS preferred)
• Proficient with SQL databases, especially PostgreSQL; NoSQL is a plus
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and test automation
• Knowledge of monitoring and logging tools (Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalent)
• Strong problem-solving skills and comfort doing code reviews
• Prior experience working with systems supporting 1M+ users is a strong plus
• Comfortable working in Agile teams
• Strong sense of responsibility and commitment to shipping high-quality software
• Willingness to participate in on-call rotations

Nice to Have

• Exposure to event sourcing or CQRS patterns
• Familiarity with frontend technologies (React)
• Knowledge of big data tools (Flink, NiFi)
• Exposure to infrastructure as code tools like Terraform
• Practical knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools like Docker and Kubernetes
• Experience in sports/betting industries

Benefits:

• Fully remote work environment.
• Professional development opportunities in a dynamic, global setting.
• A supportive, collaborative, and knowledge-driven workplace.
• An engaging and challenging role with the freedom to innovate and develop effective solutions.