Job Summary
We are seeking an experienced Senior Software Engineer with deep expertise in Ruby on Rails to join our Gamification team. In this role, you will design, build, and own critical Rails-based backend services that power PrizePicks’ core platform — including customer rewards, incentives and our loyalty program. You will tackle high-scope, complex technical problems, define the technical path from product idea to production, and mentor engineers across your team and the organization. This is a role for someone who thrives on solving hard backend problems and wants to have a direct impact on a product used by millions.
What You’ll Do
Design and build backend services: Architect and implement Rails-based services that are performant, scalable, and reliable, supporting high-throughput workloads and complex business logic.
Own technical delivery: Lead the technical design and implementation of complex features end-to-end — from product requirements through deployment and monitoring.
Drive system reliability: Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks, optimize database queries, and improve the resilience of backend systems under load.
Define technical direction: Propose and drive architectural decisions for your team’s services, evaluating tradeoffs and communicating recommendations clearly.
Mentor and elevate: Provide hands-on mentorship to Software Engineers I, II, and III on your team and in the organization through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance.
Improve engineering practices: Define, advocate for, and improve best practices around code quality, testing, observability, and deployment for your team.
Collaborate cross-functionally: Work closely with Product Managers, Designers, QA, and other engineering teams to translate product goals into well-scoped technical solutions.
Participate in on-call rotation: Share responsibility for production incidents, contributing to root cause analysis and long-term reliability improvements.
What You Have
Experience
5–8 years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time building production Ruby on Rails applications
Proven track record of owning and delivering complex, multi-component features in a team environment
Experience designing and operating backend systems that handle significant scale and complexity
High level of familiarity with the challenges of large-scale, high-throughput distributed systems and event-driven architecture
Technical Skills
Expert-level Ruby on Rails proficiency — you understand the framework deeply, write idiomatic Ruby, and know when to leverage or work around Rails conventions
Strong proficiency with PostgreSQL, including schema design, query optimization, and performance tuning at scale
Solid understanding of API design — RESTful services, serialization strategies, and versioning
Experience with background job processing (Sidekiq or similar) and asynchronous workflows
Experience with containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes)
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation
Understanding of observability practices — logging, metrics, tracing
Working knowledge of Go — our backend includes significant Go services, and cross-stack capability is valued at this level
Working Style
Comfortable working autonomously with minimal direction on ambiguous problems
Effective communicator who can articulate technical decisions to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders
Experience working in a fully remote engineering organization
Able to context-switch between deep technical work and collaborative planning
What Makes You Stand Out
Experience leveraging AI-assisted development tools across the development lifecycle — coding, planning, scoping, and code review
Experience integrating AI tooling into engineering workflows to accelerate team productivity
Experience in bringing greenfield services from 0 to production
Experience with event streaming (Kafka, Pulsar, NATS or similar)
Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (Ansible, Helm, Terraform)
Where You’ll Live
While we prefer candidates based in Atlanta, we are open to qualified applicants from anywhere in the U.S. and are willing to consider remote candidates. #LI-Remote
Working at PrizePicks
The typical salary range for this position is $175,000 to $185,000. At PrizePicks, we consider your role, level, and where you’ll be working when determining our salary ranges. The compensation info you see on our job postings gives you an idea of the starting pay range for the position. Your actual pay within that range will depend on your specific work location, as well as your skills, experience, and education. Your recruiter will be happy to chat more about the specific pay range for your location and how we arrived at it during the hiring process.
This application period will remain open for 30 days. We’re committed to finding the best candidate, so this date may be adjusted, and any changes will be reflected in this posting.
Benefits you’ll receive
In addition to your great compensation package, full-time employees will be eligible for the following perks:
Company-subsidized medical, dental, & vision plans
401(k) plan with company match
Annual bonus
Flexible PTO to encourage a healthy work/life balance (2 weeks STRONGLY encouraged!)
Generous paid leave programs, including 16-week paid parental leave and disability benefits
Workplace flexibility and modern work schedules focused on getting the job done, not hours clocked
Company-wide in-person events and team outings
Lifestyle enhancement program
Company equipment provided (Windows & Mac options)
Annual performance reviews with opportunities for growth and career development
You must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.
PrizePicks is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
