Job Description
Principal Java Engineer – Football Squad
Salary Banding: £74,840 - £98,370 per annum
Contract: Full-Time, Permanent
Working Location: Hybrid, 2 Days a week in the office, minimum
Office Locations: Basingstoke, London, Bristol
Join Our Team as a Principal Java Engineer at Hawk-Eye Innovations
Hi, I’m Peter Laszlo, Backend Discipline Lead and hiring manager for this role. I’m excited to invite you to apply for the Principal Java Engineer position in our Football Squad at Hawk-Eye Innovations. If you’re passionate about building scalable backend systems and want to work on high-impact projects for FIFA and UEFA, this could be the ideal role for you.
What Your Day Will Look Like
As a Principal Java Engineer in our Football Backend Team, you’ll play a key role in designing, developing, and optimising data-intensive backend services that power live football events. Our team is responsible for managing data feeds, event-driven processing, and cloud-based infrastructure to deliver real-time insights to global football leagues and partners.
You’ll work in an agile environment, collaborating with engineers across our football backend team. Given the high-profile nature of our work, we operate in a fast-moving environment where efficiency and scalability are key to success.
What We Value
At Hawk-Eye, we believe in collaboration, ownership, and innovation. We strive to create an environment where engineers can contribute meaningfully, solve challenging problems, and improve their skills. Given the pace of work, we value engineers who can hit the ground running, take initiative, and contribute to mission-critical projects from day one.
Key Responsibilities
Develop, optimise, and maintain backend services using Java (Spring Boot)
Contribute to design decisions for new and existing projects
Work on football-related data pipelines that power FIFA, Serie-A and UEFA operations
Deploy and scale applications in AWS (ECS, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, etc.)
Enhance system observability, ensuring real-time monitoring and logging using tools like Datadog
Work on event-driven architectures, leveraging message queues (Pulsar, Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, etc.)
Collaborate with engineers, stakeholders and external partners to meet high-impact project deadlines
Ensure system reliability and performance in high-traffic, real-time environments
Tech Stack and Skill Requirements
Required:
Expert-level Java 17+ & Spring Boot
Proven ability to lead technical initiatives and mentor senior engineers
Strong experience with AWS (or other major cloud providers)
Familiarity with observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry)
Experience with designing and evolving microservices and complex distributed systems at scale
Thorough understanding of monitoring, logging, and traceability
Experience with event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, etc.)
Ability to bridge the gap between technical details and business requirements in a fast-paced environment
Bonus Skills:
Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code (GitHub Actions, Terraform)
Familiarity with containerisation and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
Exposure to real-time data processing, low-latency systems and sports tech
Reward, Benefits, and Wellness
Annual Leave: 25 days + 8 public holidays
Enhanced Pension Scheme: 5% matching
Flexible Working: Hybrid model (2 days in the office per week)
Wellness: Complimentary Unmind app, onsite gym (Basingstoke)
Exclusive Perks: Access to sporting events and tickets, Sony Group Company discounts
Equal Opportunity Employer
Hawk-Eye is committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. We ensure all employees are treated fairly, regardless of gender, marital status, race, nationality, religion, age, disability, or union membership status. We value diversity and strive to create an environment where everyone can reach their full potential.
Apply Today!
This is a fantastic opportunity to join Hawk-Eye Innovations and make a significant impact in football technology. If you’re looking for a role where you can solve real-world problems at scale, we’d love to hear from you!
