Director of Backend & DevOps Engineering
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Overview
Job Description
Director of Backend & DevOps Engineering
Location: Remote (US-based)
Reports to: CTO
Type: Full-time
About Lucra
Lucra is a B2B gamified loyalty and engagement platform powering real-money competition, rewards, and engagement experiences for leading brands across sports, golf, hospitality, and entertainment.
Our platform enables brands to embed real-money competitions, peer-to-peer challenges, and reward mechanics directly into their consumer experiences via SDKs and APIs. Lucra supports iOS, Android, and web platforms and operates in a regulated, real-money environment.
Following our Series B raise, Lucra is entering its next phase of growth focused on revenue realization, platform scalability, operational reliability, and data-driven product differentiation. Backend systems and cloud infrastructure are core to this phase, supporting real-money transactions, partner integrations, and high-throughput event processing.
Website: www.lucrasports.com
The Role
Lucra is seeking a Director of Backend & DevOps Engineering to own the delivery, reliability, and evolution of our core backend platform.
This is a hands-on leadership role with significant individual contribution in the near term. The right candidate will combine strong technical execution with ownership of team performance, release quality, and operational maturity.
You will partner closely with Product, DevOps, Data, Mobile, Web, and Executive leadership to ensure Lucra’s backend systems are reliable, scalable, and aligned with business priorities.
What You’ll Own
Backend Delivery & Execution
Own backend delivery, execution quality, and roadmap alignment
Translate product and business priorities into clear technical plans
Ensure consistent, predictable backend delivery across teams
Identify execution bottlenecks and actively remove them
Release Management & Quality
Own backend release management processes and standards
Define and enforce rollback strategies and release safety practices
Improve test coverage, deployment confidence, and production quality
Ensure backend changes meet reliability and performance expectations before release
Reliability, Observability & Operations
Partner closely with DevOps to reduce incidents and improve system reliability
Improve observability across backend services using logging, metrics, and alerting
Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and follow-up improvements
Drive continuous improvement in uptime, performance, and operational maturity
Technical Leadership
Run architectural and technical design reviews
Set backend engineering standards and best practices
Lead by example through code reviews, hands-on problem solving, and occasional direct implementation
Raise the technical bar across backend and platform teams
Team Leadership & Management
Conduct regular 1:1s with backend engineers to identify gaps, risks, and growth opportunities early
Provide clear feedback, coaching, and technical guidance
Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement
Support hiring, onboarding, and team scaling as the organization grows
What You Bring
Required Experience
10+ years of professional software engineering experience
3+ years in senior technical leadership roles with direct ownership of backend systems
Strong hands-on experience with Node.js and TypeScript in production
Experience building and scaling GraphQL APIs
Deep familiarity with PostgreSQL
Experience operating backend systems in AWS environments, including serverless architectures
Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, preferably Terraform
Proven ownership of production reliability, incident response, and release processes
Preferred Experience
Experience leading backend teams in Series A–C SaaS companies
Experience in regulated, payments, fintech, or real-money environments
Familiarity with Hasura, event-driven architectures, or SDK platforms
Experience scaling systems with high transaction volume and external partners
Applying
We are looking for candidates available to start immediately.
Please email team@lucrasports.com with your resume to apply.
Automate your job search with Sonara.
Submit 10x as many applications with less effort than one manual application.