Let's start with the role

You will join an autonomous Agile team and work closely with the Product Owner, Agile Delivery Lead, Automation Testers, and other Software Engineers to create a competitive advantage for Kaizen and offer a unique online experience to our customers. Besides being part of the Agile team, you will work closely with talented backend professionals within the Backend Chapter. 🙌

Senior Software engineers in Kaizen are responsible for a multitude of projects, from our customer-facing websites and mobile applications to our admin and internal tools and backend services, most of them withstanding high volume / traffic.

• Assume full responsibility for our applications on an engaging development journey.
• Create new solutions and see them through, from conception to production;
• Turn requirements into simple and sophisticated technological systems. Our large-scale, highly available infrastructure is at the core of that challenge;
• Play a central role in designing, building, and maintaining efficient, reusable, and reliable code;
• Research new technologies to find new and efficient ways to solve day-to-day challenges;
• Ship high-value features quickly;
• Challenge the status quo and improve the team and product;

Most of our sites and services are written in C# / ASP.NET, and new services are written in .NET Core. New applications use vue.js or Angular on the front end, while older ones use server-rendered (Razor) views in combination with jQuery. Microsoft Orleans enables our scalable and robust distributed applications. MS SQL Server is used for most of our storage needs, but also Redis and ElasticSearch are used when it makes sense to do so. RabbitMQ is our go-to message broker. We use Gitlab for code versioning and CI, and the Atlassian stack for tickets and documentation.

What you'll bring

• At least 4 years of experience developing production-level software using .NET Core;
• Proficient in C# and MVC;
• Experience with Testing/Metrics Monitoring/Logging on a large scale distributed system;
• Experience with Microservices architecture;
• Experience with asynchronous flows using message brokers;
• Good understanding of basic web technologies, such as HTTP, REST, etc.;
• Practical knowledge of algorithms and design patterns;
• Passionate about delivering high-quality code;
• Fluent in English, both oral and written.

Nice to have:

• Expertise in concurrency, multi-threading, and event-driven architecture.

Kaizen Gaming Perks

• 🕑 Hybrid way of working
• 🏃 A buddy will support you with your onboarding
• 💸 Competitive pay & bonus scheme
• 👩‍⚕️ Private health insurance for you and your family
• 💰 Monthly meal allowance 
• 🏋️‍♂️ Multisport card
• ⭐Developmental 360° feedback framework
• 📚 Unlimited access to Udemy & continuous training

#LI-Hybrid

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Let’s start with the role

• Design, build and maintain efficient, reusable and reliable code;
• Develop interfaces between components of heterogeneous subsystems running in a high-volume transaction-oriented production environment;
• Ensure the best possible performance, quality, and responsiveness of applications;
• Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to complex problems.

Tech stack

Most of our sites and services are written in C# / ASP.NET. Newer services are written in .NET Core. New applications use vue.js in the front-end while older ones use server-rendered (Razor) views in combination with jQuery & Knockout.js. MS SQL server is used for most of our storage needs, but also uses Redis and ElasticSearch when it makes sense to do so. RabbitMQ is our go-to message broker. We use Gitlab for code versioning and CI, and the Atlassian stack for tickets and documentation.

What you’ll bring

• At least 1 year of development experience using C# / ASP.NET / MVC (full framework or .NET Core);
• Basic understanding of basic web technologies, such as HTTP, etc.;
• Experience with data access (databases / APIs);
• Exposure to unit testing is a plus.

Kaizen Gaming Perks

• 🕑 Hybrid way of working
• 🏃 A buddy will support you with your onboarding
• 💸 Competitive pay and bonus scheme
• 👩‍⚕️ Private health insurance for you and your family
• 💰 Monthly meal allowance 
• 🤸 Multi-sport card
• 🌴 Additional vacation days
• ⭐Developmental 360° feedback framework
• 📚 Unlimited access to Udemy & continuous training
• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family Support

#LI-Hybrid

#LI-gs1

About Us:  

Delasport is where technology meets the excitement of sports and gaming! As a leading powerhouse in iGaming software, we provide everything from sports betting to online casinos and player account management. Our platform is designed to make every player feel like the star of the show, with personalized experience and cutting-edge technology at its heart.    

Since 2010, we've made a significant impact in industry, earning awards and expanding our global presence. With offices in Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Malta, our team of over 500 experts is constantly driving innovation and striving for excellence.  

About the Role 

We're hiring a Team Lead for one of the most consequential engineering teams at Delasport - the team that owns KYC, AML, anti-fraud, and regulatory compliance across the platform. 

These aren't peripheral services. They're what makes it legally possible for our operators to take a bet in every market we're licensed in. Every player who signs up, every withdrawal, every suspicious pattern, every regulator report - it flows through systems your team owns. When a new jurisdiction comes online, your team is on the critical path. 

If you want a leadership role where the work is technically real, the stakes are visible, and the autonomy is genuine - read on.

This role is based in Sofia, Bulgaria and we welcome candidates who are open to relocating (relocation support provided). 

What Your Team Owns 

You'll lead a team of 5 full-stack developers and 2 QAs responsible for: 

• KYC - identity verification pipelines, document checks, and third-party provider integrations 
• AML - transaction monitoring, sanctions and PEP screening, suspicious-activity detection 
• Anti-Fraud - behavioural analysis and fraud-pattern detection across player activity 
• Regulatory Compliance - jurisdiction-specific rules, reporting obligations, and operator configurations 

The footprint is a mix of synchronous APIs, scheduled jobs, and real-time stream consumers processing events off Kafka and RabbitMQ. 

What You'll Actually Work On  

• Shaping the future stack. Today the team works across PHP/Laravel, Python, and TypeScript/Vue. All new services will be written in Node.js, and you'll be a key voice in shaping how that evolution unfolds - patterns, shared libraries, deployment standards. 
• Driving technical excellence. Setting and raising the bar on performance, reliability, and operational maturity across the team's services. 
• Real ownership of production. The team owns its services end to end - design, build, ship, observe, fix. You set the standard for how that ownership is exercised. 
• Growing the team. Seniors ready to push toward staff-level work; mids ready to grow into seniors. Your impact on them will be one of the most rewarding parts of this role. 

What You’ll Do 

• Lead the team. Set technical direction, code-quality bar, and architectural standards. Run code reviews that teach. Develop the engineers under you. 
• Stay hands-on. This is not a pure people-management role. You'll write code, design systems, and pair on hard problems. 
• Architect for the real world. Design services that handle real-time event streams reliably, fail safely under regulatory scrutiny, and integrate cleanly with the third-party providers we depend on. 
• Drive the technical roadmap. Make and defend the calls on what to refactor, what to rewrite, and where to invest the team's time. 
• Partner across the org. Work closely with Product, DevOps, Data, and the Compliance/Legal side of the business - the last of which is unusual for an engineering role and one of the more interesting parts of the job. 

Employees may be required to participate in an on-call rotation, ensuring availability outside regular working hours to respond to urgent issues as needed as per the On call policy. 

Why This Role Is Different 

• High business impact. When KYC breaks, players can't deposit. When AML breaks, we have a regulatory problem. The work matters and people know it. 
• Polyglot by design, not by accident. PHP, Python, TypeScript today; Node.js for everything new. If you're tired of being pigeonholed in one language, this team doesn't do that. 
• Genuine ownership. Your team owns its services end to end. No throwing things over the wall. 
• Regulated-domain depth. You'll learn how iGaming compliance actually works at the engineering level -  a specialisation that's genuinely valuable and surprisingly rare on the market. 

Who You Are  

• Experience: 7+ years building backend systems in PHP, including 2+ years leading a team or operating as a senior technical lead. 
• Core technical strength: 
• Strong PHP and OOP fundamentals - design patterns, clean architecture, testability. 
• Production experience with Laravel (or strong Symfony experience and the willingness to ramp on Laravel). 
• Comfortable working with event-driven systems - Kafka, RabbitMQ, or equivalent. You've built and operated consumers, not just published a message once. 
• Solid grasp of relational databases (MySQL/PostgreSQL) - schema design, query performance, the things that bite at scale. 
• Working experience with NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, or similar) - knowing when to reach for it and when not to. 
• Comfortable with Docker, containerised deployments, and at least one cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure). 
• Architecture sense: You can reason about scalability, fault tolerance, and failure modes - and explain trade-offs to people who don't share your background. 
• Leadership: You lead by setting direction and raising the bar of those around you, not by managing tickets. Strong written and spoken English. 
• Mindset: Pragmatic, bias toward shipping, comfortable with ambiguity, genuinely interested in the business problem and not just the technical one. 

Nice to Have 

• Experience in iGaming, fintech, or any regulated domain (banking, payments, healthcare). 
• Hands-on experience with KYC/AML/fraud-prevention systems or vendor integrations. 
• Working knowledge of Python and/or Node.js. 
• Exposure to TypeScript/Vue or another modern frontend stack. 

What We Offer to Make You Smile: 

We’re not just about work,  we are about creating a great place to grow, connect, and enjoy the journey. Here’s what you can expect when you join us: 

• Competitive Salary Package: We value your skills, dedication, and contributions 
• Time Off: Enjoy 21+ days of annual paid leave so you can rest, recharge, and come back inspired 
• Bonus & Rewards: Performance-based annual bonuses, special vouchers for birthdays and welcoming a newborn 
• Health & Wellness: Additional Health insurance including dental care; Co-funding a Multisport/Coolfit card to help you stay active 
• Extra Benefits: Employee discounts at various retailers and a monthly allowance for public transportation 
• Great Office Locations: Central office location in Sofia and Plovdiv 
• Relax & Recharge Zone: Take a break with colleagues in our PlayStation and Pool Area - perfect for recharging during the day 

Wait, there’s more: 

• Happy Hour Fridays: Every Friday we host themed Happy Hours with snacks, fun activities, and plenty of opportunities to connect and unwind with colleagues 
• Multicultural Days: Celebrate diversity and experience the traditions, food, and cultures of teammates from around the world 
• Massages at the Office: Weekly Free Recreational Massages to help relax during the workday 
• Chess Lessons: Sharpen your strategic thinking and enjoy some friendly competition with colleagues 
• Sports & Football Team: We regularly participate in various sports events and have our own Delasport Football Team, competing in the IT League 
• Bulgarian Language Lessons: Bulgarian for Foreigners classes to support smoother communication 
• Office Library: Enjoy access to technical literature to expand your knowledge 

Ready to Be Part of Something Big?    

If you're excited to join a team that's revolutionizing the iGaming world and want to make a real impact, apply today. We can't wait to meet you!  

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Responsibilities

We are looking for a Senior Python Engineer to play a key role in building the core of our AI platform. In this position, you will design and develop production-grade systems that power intelligent automation, agentic workflows, and large-scale retrieval services. This is a highly technical, hands-on role that involves close collaboration with product and platform teams to transform advanced AI concepts into reliable, scalable, and secure solutions used across our enterprise ecosystem. You will also be responsible to:

• Design, build, and maintain AI-powered services and APIs, leveraging LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Qwen, OSS models) and custom ML models.

• Develop an enterprise-grade agentic framework that enables orchestration, retrieval, and collaboration between multiple AI agents.

• Implement and optimize knowledge retrieval systems and agentic search capabilities using vector databases such as Qdrant and ElasticSearch.

• Write well-structured, efficient, and testable Python code for production services, experimentation, and internal developer tools.

• Build and maintain shared Python libraries and SDKs used across multiple applications and microservices.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams on architecture, internal protocols, and API standards to ensure consistency and reliability across the platform.

• Develop and enhance monitoring, validation, and observability for production-grade AI solutions.

• Drive the full software development lifecycle - from design and implementation to deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement.

• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, reliability issues, and scaling challenges in complex, data-intensive environments.

• Participate in code reviews and technical discussions, mentoring other engineers and contributing to a culture of excellence.

Example Projects

• Building an evaluation and observability framework for AI model performance and reliability.

• Developing an agentic orchestration platform that enables collaboration among multiple AI agents and tools.

• Implementing semantic retrieval and agentic search capabilities over large enterprise knowledge bases.

• Designing AI services that process and reason over high-volume real-world data at scale.

Requirements

Qualifications / Experience / Technical Skills

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 5+ years of experience as a Software Engineer, with strong proficiency in Python.

• Proven track record of building and maintaining production-grade systems using Python.

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, API design, and data-driven architectures.

• Experience with relational and non-relational databases (PostgreSQL, Elastic, Qdrant, or similar).

• Familiarity with AI/ML system design, including LLM integration and evaluation pipelines.

• Knowledge of DevOps and observability practices (CI/CD, monitoring, metrics, and model validation).

• Python • FastAPI • LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Qwen, OSS) • LiteLLM • Qdrant • PostgreSQL • ElasticSearch • Langfuse • Kubernetes • GitHub Actions • ArgoCD

Preferred Skills

• Experience working with multiple LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Qwen, open-source models).

• Background in developer platforms or AI infrastructure services.

• Familiarity with vector databases, semantic retrieval, and knowledge graph architectures.

• Exposure to Langfuse, LiteLLM, LangChain, or similar frameworks.

• Experience developing enterprise-scale SaaS or distributed backend systems.

• Contributions to open-source projects in Python, AI, or infrastructure engineering.

Soft Skills / Personal Characteristics

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Collaborative and proactive approach, comfortable working across teams in a dynamic environment.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a focus on continuous improvement and innovation.

• Curiosity and a genuine interest in emerging AI technologies and modern backend architectures.

(REQ ID: 2459)

Company & Department Context

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading business news organisations, recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. The FT has a record paying readership of one million, three-quarters of which are digital subscriptions. It is part of Nikkei Inc., which provides a broad range of information, news and services for the global business community.

We have offices in more than 35 cities, including London, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Manila, Sofia, San Francisco and Tokyo. Join us and find an inclusive and fast-paced environment with unique opportunities to support every step of your career.

Learn more about the FT, including announcements and career opportunities, at aboutus.ft.com.

Position Overview

FT Core is seeking talented and motivated Senior Backend Engineer to join our Content & Metadata team. This team is responsible for the Content & Metadata platform which enables the publishing, delivery, and enrichment of the digital content produced for the FT products. The team is starting its journey to rethink the way how content is published and consumed, and as a member of this team, you will be laying the foundation for the next generation of APIs and capabilities used across the FT’s products and services.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about learning new technologies, thrives in a fast-paced environment, and is eager to solve complex problems. While we value experience in our technology stack (Go, Kubernetes, AWS, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Neo4j, Kafka, and Elasticsearch), we are open to candidates with diverse backgrounds who are quick learners and have a strong foundation in software development.

Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable code for our microservices architecture.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define, design, and ship new features.
• Work with various databases to design and optimise data models and queries.
• Implement, optimise, and maintain cloud infrastructure.
• Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to these problems.
• Maintain code quality, organisation, and automatization.

Requirements:

• Proficiency in at least one programming language (experience in Go is a plus).
• Basic understanding of microservices architecture and containerization technologies.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and services.
• Experience with databases (relational, document, or graph).
• Understanding of fundamental design principles behind a scalable application.
• Ability to write clean, readable, and maintainable code.
• Strong problem-solving, debugging, and troubleshooting skills.
• Effective communication and collaboration abilities.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Go, Kubernetes, and AWS.
• Familiarity with MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Neo4j, Kafka, and Elasticsearch.
• Knowledge of Agile/Scrum development process.
• Understanding of CI/CD best practices.
• Semantic Search
• AI (LLM)

What’s in it for you?

• Annual bonus scheme
• 25 days paid leave
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Parental Leave policy
• Food Allowance
• Multisport Card
• Comprehensive in-house training, and external training programs (subject to approval)

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion 

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email talent@ft.com and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.

Please beware of fraudulent job postings and offers claiming to be from the Financial Times. All legitimate opportunities will direct you to apply through the official Financial Times careers site, and the FT will never ask for financial information, payments, or referrals to third parties during the hiring process. If you have any concerns about the legitimacy of a job posting or suspect any scam activity, please contact talent@ft.com. 

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