Sports Operations Engineer, Kalshi
$100-150k
+ Equity
Trading platform for future event outcomes
Be an early applicant
Trading platform for future event outcomes
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
$100-150k
+ Equity
21-100 employees
Company mission
To allow people to capitalize on their opinions and hedge risks that relate to their everyday lives.
Role
Who you are
- 1-3 years of experience as a software engineer with a proven track record of building production systems
- Strong proficiency in Python and JavaScript with experience building automation scripts, data processing systems, and web applications
- Experience with DAG frameworks (Airflow, Prefect, Dagster) for orchestrating complex workflows and data pipelines
- Expertise with cron jobs and scheduled task management in production environments, including monitoring and error handling
- Experience pulling, processing, and structuring large datasets from APIs, webhooks, and real-time data feeds. Familiarity with data formats common in sports data (JSON, XML, WebSocket streams)
- Proven ability to build automation and data pipelines that handle high-volume, time-sensitive operations with strong error handling and recovery mechanisms
- Track record of making continuous tooling improvements and building internal products that scale with team needs
- Product ownership mentality with experience gathering requirements, prioritizing features, and delivering tools that solve real operational problems
- Strong knowledge of sports and sportsbook operations including understanding of different market types, settlement rules, and common edge cases across major sports leagues
- Experience with sports data providers is strongly preferred
- Database expertise with both SQL and NoSQL systems for storing and querying sports data efficiently
- Experience with real-time systems including WebSockets, event streaming, and message queues
- Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills with ability to quickly diagnose and fix issues in production systems
- Excellent communication skills to work effectively with non-technical operations team members and translate requirements into technical solutions
- Ability to work flexible hours including on-call rotations to support live sporting events across different time zones
- Passion for sports combined with technical excellence and a commitment to building world-class market infrastructure
What the job involves
- As a Sports Operations Engineer at Kalshi, you'll be the technical force behind our sports markets infrastructure
- You'll build and maintain the automation systems that power thousands of sports markets across all major leagues
- This role combines deep sports knowledge with strong engineering skills to create scalable solutions for market listing, monitoring, and settlement
- We're scaling rapidly, which means your role will evolve and grow with the company
- Automation Development: Design and build Python automation scripts that list, update, and determine sports markets at scale. Create intelligent systems that handle pre-game, in-play, and futures markets across NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, NCAA, and international competitions without manual intervention
- Data Pipeline Architecture: Build robust data pipelines that ingest, process, and structure large volumes of sports data from multiple feeds. Design systems that handle real-time game data, player statistics, injury reports, weather updates, and official league sources while maintaining data integrity and low latency
- DAG & Workflow Orchestration: Implement and maintain complex DAGs for orchestrating market operations workflows. Design fault-tolerant systems that handle dependencies between data ingestion, market creation, live updates, and settlement processes across thousands of concurrent sporting events
- Scheduled Job Management: Develop and maintain cron jobs and scheduled tasks that automatically list markets at optimal times, update odds based on market conditions, and settle markets immediately after game completion. Ensure reliable execution during high-volume periods like NFL Sundays
- Internal Tooling Ownership: Own and evolve internal tools used by the Market Operations team. Build intuitive interfaces for market management, settlement verification, and operational monitoring. Gather requirements from operators and continuously improve tooling to increase efficiency and reduce errors
- Sports Logic Implementation: Translate complex sports rules and edge cases into code. Build systems that understand overtime rules, tiebreakers, playoff scenarios, and sport-specific nuances. Implement logic for handling postponements, suspensions, protests, and stat corrections across different leagues
- Real-time Processing Systems: Create systems that process live game feeds and trigger appropriate market actions in real-time. Build monitoring and alerting systems that detect anomalies, data discrepancies, or unusual game situations requiring intervention
- Settlement Automation: Develop automated settlement systems that accurately determine market outcomes based on official results. Implement verification layers that cross-reference multiple data sources and flag potential discrepancies for review
- Performance Optimization: Continuously improve system performance to handle increasing market volumes. Optimize database queries, implement caching strategies, and ensure our infrastructure scales smoothly during peak trading periods
- Cross-functional Engineering: Collaborate with Product, Contracts, and broader Engineering teams to integrate sports operations systems with Kalshi's core platform. Design APIs and services that enable seamless market operations
Our take
Despite there being a broad choice of investment models, traders have not traditionally been able to invest in the outcomes of future events. Kalshi, as the first federally regulated exchange where users can invest, trade and essentially "bet" on future outcomes, sets out to change this.
The company has launched a unique asset class called "event contracts", where investors can buy simple yes or no contracts based on whether an event will happen or not. Since gaining federal regulation, Kalshi has begun adding expertise in key areas, hiring Google’s Phil Bogle as Director of Engineering and former Nadex CEO Timothy McDermott to the Board of Directors.
The key to the company's future will be maintaining trust with users through transparency, particularly on how more complex or ongoing ‘wagers’ are settled. The team has been backed with funding from Sequoia Capital, who have most likely gauged how valuable the opinion data collected on the site could be to market and political researchers - although the CFTC's reluctance to approve betting on US elections has presented a block in the road for Kalshi's plans to add "the outcome of congressional elections" to its asset options.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Jun 2025
$185m
LATE VC
Feb 2021
$30m
SERIES A
Total funding: $215.2m
Company benefits
- Work from home opportunities
Company HQ
SoHo, New York, NY
Leadership
Luana Lopes Lara
(Co-Founder)Studied Computer Science at MIT. Researcher at MIT in the Media Lab and later the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Worked as a Quantitative Trader at Five Rings Capital and Citadel Securities. Most recently she was a Researcher at the MIT Brain and Cognitive Science Centre.
Tarek Mansour
(Co-Founder)Studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Started off working in finance, as an Analyst at Audi Capital and Goldman Sachs. Was a Quantitative Trader twice at Five Rings Capital and Citadel Securities.
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