Director of Backend & DevOps Engineering

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 [email protected] with your resume to apply.