Staff Backend Engineer

Magic Eden is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer to design distributed, event-driven systems and optimize for speed and scalability. In this role, you'll lead projects from design to production and contribute to technical direction in a fast-paced, high-impact environment.

Overview

Department

Engineering

Job type

Full time

Compensation

Salary not specified

Location

Melbourne, Australia, Oceania & Pacific Islands

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The Challenge

This isn’t a maintenance role — it’s a zero-to-one system build. You’ll design distributed, event-driven systems, optimise for speed and scalability, and make architectural calls that shape how millions of bets move across the network.

We’re looking for someone who can balance pace with rigour: ship fast, but build for the long term. You should be comfortable leading projects end-to-end — from initial design through to production support — and mentoring others along the way.

“Our people have great talent but don’t take themselves too seriously. This is a team where people enjoy the challenges of building and shipping things. There’s not a massive hierarchy, which means we’re very low on ego.”

What You’ll Do

Lead the design and development of backend services usingNode.js, TypeScript, and AWS.

Own your domain end-to-end: architecture, build, deploy, and monitor in production.

Build and optimise data pipelines and event-driven systems (Kafka, Kinesis, or equivalent).

Build relationships across disciplines like Infrastructure to remove blockers and get things done.

Contribute to technical direction, design reviews, and cross-team engineering decisions.

What We’re Looking For

7+ years’ experiencebuilding and scaling production systems.

Proven experience deliveringhigh-throughput, low-latencyservices (fintech, betting, gaming, trading, or similar).

Strong foundation in distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and data streaming.

Comfortable leading small teams or large projects, designing, developing, delivering, and supporting systems at scale.

Either deepindustry experience in betting/sports, or a strongdomain specialisation(e.g. streaming, real-time data, distributed systems). We can trade one for the other if you truly excel.

Resourceful,respectfully opinionated, generous with knowledge. You care about quality, impact, and the people who ship alongside you.

We valueextreme accountability,collaboration, andclarity of ownership. Engineers here are expected to be self-directed — to identify what needs to be built and take it from concept to code. Bring your ideas, build prototypes, show them off.

Why Join Now

Join from day zero, when your code shapes the platform.

Build alongside founders who scaled Magic Eden from idea to unicorn in nine months.

Work directly with Sid Zhang (ex-Uber Eats, Meta AI) and a senior engineering team with deep experience in large-scale, real-time systems.

We’re Melbourne-based, office-first (four days onsite while we build momentum).

Competitive compensation + equity at a company that’s proved it can scale fast.

This is a build-the-plane-while-flying-it kind of role.If that sounds like your kind of fun, let’s talk.