Senior Backend Engineer, API

Polymarket Inc.

Job Overview

Location

New York

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Polymarket is seeking a highly skilled Senior Backend Engineer to join our dynamic team and play a pivotal role in developing Gamma, the core backend system that powers our rapidly growing prediction market platform. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to a system that processes every market creation, trade, and resolution at an immense scale, demanding precision, reliability, and efficiency. If you are passionate about building robust, high-performance backend services and want your work to have an immediate and visible impact on a platform used by millions, this role is for you.
• As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will be instrumental in architecting and implementing robust Go-based services. Your primary focus will be on designing and building services that can sustain exceptionally high request throughput while maintaining low latency, even under significant load. This involves not only writing efficient code but also understanding the intricate details of distributed systems and concurrency patterns to ensure scalability and performance. You will be responsible for defining and enforcing critical engineering standards across the backend, including establishing a clear API versioning strategy, implementing consistent error handling conventions, and setting rigorous service health benchmarks. This ensures that our backend services are not only functional but also maintainable, predictable, and reliable as the platform evolves.
• A significant part of your role will involve upholding the highest standards of code quality. This will be achieved through rigorous code reviews, fostering shared coding conventions, and creating comprehensive technical documentation that serves as a foundation for the broader engineering team. Your commitment to quality will directly influence the maintainability and scalability of our codebase. You will also be a key collaborator, partnering cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and infrastructure teams to ensure that backend services are seamlessly aligned with overarching company goals and product roadmaps. This collaborative approach is essential for delivering cohesive and impactful features.
• Furthermore, you will take ownership of the reliability of our systems. This includes actively participating in on-call rotations to address production issues promptly and driving continuous reliability improvements. Your insights will be informed by thorough analysis of incident trends and detailed monitoring of system behavior, ensuring that we proactively identify and mitigate potential risks. You will contribute to building a resilient and fault-tolerant platform that our users can depend on, even during peak usage periods. The work you do will directly influence the user experience and the overall success of Polymarket, a platform that is rapidly becoming a trusted source of truth in global media.
• This role offers a unique chance to push the boundaries of what our current system can handle and to help shape how ownership and best practices evolve as the platform experiences exponential growth. You will be at the forefront of innovation, tackling complex technical challenges and contributing to a product that is making a significant impact. The opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies and to see your contributions translate into tangible product improvements makes this a highly rewarding position for an ambitious backend engineer. You will be part of a fast-paced environment where your contributions are valued and where you can truly make a difference in shaping the future of prediction markets.
• The Gamma backend is the engine of Polymarket, processing billions of dollars in trades and market creations. As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will be responsible for the performance, scalability, and reliability of this critical system. This involves not just writing code, but also thinking critically about system design, data flow, and potential failure points. You will have the autonomy to make significant technical decisions and to implement solutions that have a direct impact on the user experience and the company's bottom line. Your expertise in Go and microservices architecture will be crucial in ensuring that Gamma can handle the increasing demands of our growing user base and trading volume. You will also be involved in defining the technical roadmap for the backend, ensuring that we are always ahead of the curve in terms of technology and performance.
• Beyond the technical aspects, you will contribute to a culture of engineering excellence. This means championing best practices, mentoring junior engineers, and fostering a collaborative and supportive team environment. Your leadership and technical guidance will be invaluable in helping the team navigate complex challenges and achieve ambitious goals. The opportunity to grow your career alongside a rapidly expanding company, while working on a product with significant real-world implications, is unparalleled. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in a challenging yet rewarding environment and is eager to leave their mark on a groundbreaking platform.

🎯 Requirements

• 5+ years of production Go experience: fluent in Go idioms, interfaces, and concurrency patterns
• Strong API and microservices architecture experience: designing, implementing, and maintaining REST and GraphQL APIs at scale
• Deep SQL expertise with PostgreSQL or MySQL, plus familiarity with non-relational stores including Redis and ClickHouse
• Event-driven architecture experience: messaging systems like Redpanda or Kafka, real-time data pipelines, and gRPC service communication
• Hands-on observability and monitoring experience with Prometheus, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry for tracing, metrics, and alerting

🏖️ Benefits

• Competitive salary & equity
• Unlimited PTO
• Full Health, Vision, & Dental coverage
• 401k match
• Hardware setup: new MacBook Pro, big display, & accessories

Skills & Technologies

Rust

Express

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Backend

Senior

Onsite

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Polymarket Inc.

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About Polymarket Inc.

Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform that allows users to trade on the outcomes of future events. Operating on blockchain technology, it enables individuals to bet on a wide range of topics, including politics, current events, and cryptocurrency. The platform facilitates transparent and trustless trading by leveraging smart contracts, ensuring that payouts are automatically executed based on verified event resolutions. Polymarket aims to democratize information and provide a novel way for people to engage with and profit from their insights into the future, fostering a global community of informed predictors.

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