Java Engineer Team Lead

• Location: Krakow
• Working mode: Remote, 3 days a week from the office
• Employment type: B2B or COE

About the Company

Our client is the technology arm behind one of Latin America’s leading sportsbook and casino brands. The company is investing in building its next-generation gaming platform in-house.

The engineering hub is based in Krakow, with teams collaborating across Europe and the Americas.

The Role

We are looking for a Java Engineer Team Lead to lead a team of Java Engineers responsible for building the core backend services of a new PAM platform.

This is a greenfield project, meaning there is no legacy codebase to maintain. You and your team will build critical transactional services from scratch, covering player wallets, payments, bonuses, ledger operations and account lifecycle management.

The systems will handle real-money transactions for millions of players and must remain reliable under high traffic and peak sportsbook loads. Strong engineering practices, data integrity and operational awareness are therefore essential.

This role combines technical leadership with hands-on development. You will have a real impact on technical decisions within your domain, contribute to architectural discussions and remain actively involved in writing production code.

You will report to an Engineering Manager and work closely with the Principal Engineer responsible for Backend Services.

What You’ll Do

• Lead, mentor and develop a team of Java Engineers, setting priorities and taking ownership of delivery within your domain.
• Design, develop and maintain backend services for the PAM platform, including wallet transactions, payment flows, ledger entries, bonus mechanics and account management.
• Build REST APIs and event-driven integrations using Kafka or similar messaging technologies.
• Ensure high standards of code quality and reliability through comprehensive testing, idempotent operations, well-defined transaction boundaries and robust error handling.
• Develop features supporting regulatory requirements, including KYC/AML processes, responsible gaming controls and audit trails.
• Take ownership of production readiness by implementing monitoring, structured logging, tracing and alerting.
• Participate in the team’s on-call rotation and help troubleshoot production incidents.
• Contribute to technical design discussions, RFCs and code reviews.
• Use AI-assisted development tools as part of your daily engineering workflow.
• Support the migration from the existing third-party platform, including parity testing, data migration validation and production cutover.

What You’ll Bring

• At least 2 years of experience managing or leading software engineering teams.
• 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience, with strong hands-on knowledge of Java 17+ and Spring Boot or a similar framework.
• Proven experience building and operating transactional systems such as payment platforms, wallets, banking, billing, e-commerce checkout or gaming systems.
• Strong understanding of relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL, including schema design, transactions, locking mechanisms and query optimisation.
• Experience with event-driven architecture and messaging technologies such as Kafka or RabbitMQ, including idempotency and retry mechanisms.
• A strong testing mindset, with practical experience in unit, integration and contract testing.
• Experience working with containers, CI/CD pipelines and production monitoring tools.
• Good written and spoken English, with the ability to collaborate effectively in a distributed, international team.

Nice to Have

• Experience in iGaming, sports betting, fintech or another regulated, high-volume transactional environment.
• Exposure to Kubernetes and AWS.
• Familiarity with compliance-related requirements such as KYC/AML, responsible gaming and audit processes.
• Experience with AI coding assistants and agentic development workflows.
• Polish and/or Spanish language skills.

The offer

• Choice of B2B or employment contract (UoP).
• Competitive compensation aligned with the senior Polish tech market, plus a performance-based bonus.
• Budget for hardware, development tools, and professional development.
• Private medical care and a benefits package.
• The opportunity to build a business-critical platform from scratch, using modern technologies without legacy constraints.
• Collaboration with experienced engineers on a major international gaming product.