Overview

Senior Software Engineer; iGaming Jobs in Cape Town, South Africa at Initiate

Position: Senior Software Engineer (iGaming)

We are partnering with a global sports media and sports betting technology company to appoint a Senior Java Backend Engineer for their engineering hub in Cape Town. This team builds and maintains high-performance gaming and sports platforms used by millions of customers worldwide.

Reporting into the engineering leadership team, this is a hands-on role focused on designing and delivering scalable backend services that power real-time betting, media, and sports products.

This opportunity is ideal for a senior level backend engineer who enjoys solving complex system challenges, working with high-throughput distributed systems, and owning features from design through to production.

What You Will Do:

As a Senior Java Backend Engineer, you will play a key role in designing and delivering reliable, scalable backend services within a modern engineering environment.

  • Design and build scalable backend services using Java and the Spring ecosystem
  • Own end-to-end feature delivery from architecture and development through deployment and optimisation
  • Develop high-throughput, low-latency systems supporting real-time sports betting and media platforms
  • Write clean, well-tested, production-ready code and contribute to maintaining high engineering standards through code reviews and design discussions
  • Collaborate closely with Product Managers and fellow engineers to shape technical solutions
  • Design and optimise relational data models and write efficient SQL queries
  • Manage database schema changes and migrations while maintaining production stability
  • Contribute to improvements in developer experience including tooling, pipelines, observability, and performance
  • Work with event-driven and message-based systems using technologies such as Kafka and RabbitMQ
  • Use modern development tools and AI assistants (such as Copilot) pragmatically to improve development efficiency
  • Participate in Agile delivery processes including sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives

All About You:

We are looking for a technically strong Senior Backend Engineer with deep experience in Java and modern backend architecture.

  • Strong experience building enterprise-grade Java applications
  • Deep hands-on experience with the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Cloud, Spring Security)
  • Experience designing scalable, maintainable, and observable backend systems
  • Strong experience with relational databases and SQL optimisation
  • Experience working with message queues or event-driven systems such as Kafka or RabbitMQ
  • Experience using Git-based workflows including pull requests, branching strategies, and code reviews
  • Experience collaborating within Agile development teams
  • Ability to mentor other engineers and contribute to raising engineering standards
  • Strong problem-solving mindset with the ability to evaluate trade-offs in system design

Nice to Have:

  • Experience in iGaming, sports betting, fintech, or other regulated high-scale industries
  • Experience with cloud platforms, particularly GCP
  • Experience working with Docker and CI/CD pipelines
  • Exposure to frontend frameworks such as Vue.js or Angular
  • Experience with performance tuning, distributed systems, or event-driven architecture
  • Experience improving developer tooling, observability, or platform engineering capabilities

Tech Stack

  • Backend:
    Java, Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Cloud, Spring Security, AMQP
  • Databases:
    MySQL, MongoDB
  • Messaging:
    Kafka, RabbitMQ
  • Cloud:
    Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
  • Frontend (exposure):
    Vue.js, Angular
  • Testing & APIs:
    Cypress, Postman
  • Version Control:
    Git Hub
  • IDE:
    Intelli

    J Ultimate

  • Containers & CI/CD:
    Docker and modern deployment pipelines

Additional Information

  • Location:

    Cape Town, South Africa

  • Opportunity to work on globally scaled sports betting and gaming platforms
  • Collaborative engineering culture focused on technical excellence and delivery

If you are a Senior Java Engineer looking to build high-scale platforms within the sports and gaming technology space, we would love to hear from you.

Title: Senior Software Engineer; iGaming

Company: Initiate

Location: Cape Town, South Africa

Category:

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