Staff Software Engineer - API Team

Collectors is the leading creator of innovative technology that provides value-added services for collectors worldwide. We grade, authenticate, vault, and sell millions of record-setting collectibles, all while modernizing and digitalizing the process to further our mission of helping collectors pursue their passions. We’re always on the lookout for talented people to join our growing team.

Our services span collectible trading cards, autographs, comic books, coins, video games, event tickets, and memorabilia. Our subsidiaries include PSA, PCGS, Beckett, SGC, and Card Ladder.

Since our founding in 1986, we have graded and authenticated millions of items. We employ more than 3000 people across our headquarters in Santa Ana, California and offices in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Germany, the UK, and France.

As part of our interview process, we request that candidates have their cameras on during video interviews. This helps foster meaningful conversation and allows us to create an experience that closely resembles our standard working environment. Certain interview steps may take place by phone. For remote roles, and at our discretion, candidates may be asked to participate in an on-site interview as part of the final stages of the process.

We understand there may be occasional circumstances requiring accommodation and are happy to discuss them as needed. Your recruiter will be able to clarify expectations and answer any questions you have.

Staff Software Engineer, API and Collectibles Data Team

About Collectors

Collectors is the leading creator of innovative technology that provides value-added services for collectors worldwide. We grade, authenticate, vault, and sell millions of record-setting collectibles, all while modernizing and digitalizing the process to further our mission of helping collectors pursue their passions.

Our services span collectible trading cards, autographs, comic books, coins, video games, event tickets, and memorabilia. Our subsidiaries include PSA, PCGS, Beckett, SGC, and Card Ladder. Since our founding in 1986, we have graded and authenticated millions of items, and today we employ more than 3,000 people across our headquarters in Santa Ana, California and offices in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France.

We're transforming the collecting experience with technology that brings authentication, grading, and trading into the modern era. Our products are equalizing the playing field by providing tools that make complex research analytics (including pricing, scarcity reports, and historic sales data) accessible to every collector, old or new. Our Product & Engineering mission is to democratize technology while promoting innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning throughout the organization.

About the Role

We are looking for two Staff Software Engineers to set the technical direction for the API and Collectibles Data Team, the engineering team responsible for turning Collectors' collectibles data into products: the external APIs that partners and customers build on, and the spec data that identifies every item we grade, authenticate, and sell.

This team owns the external-facing APIs and API gateway layer, developer portals, the spec data models and ingestion pipelines behind our collectibles catalog, and the integrations that downstream products depend on. Its work serves PSA, Beckett, SGC, Card Ladder, marketplace and research teams, and external partners across millions of collectible specs and certificates.

As a Staff Software Engineer, your influence extends beyond your team to the technology organization. You will have expertise in the entirety of the team's portfolio, including how our services interact and how data flows between them, and you will build the same understanding of adjacent systems across grading, marketplace, vault, and identity.

This is a high-impact, high-visibility role. Every product that shows or prices a collectible depends on the data and APIs this team ships. You will own architecture decisions, API strategy, and the quality bar for everything that ships.

We believe there is significant value in onsite partnership and team collaboration, and candidates within 1-hour commuting distance of the office may be expected to work onsite most of the time. Additional details will be discussed during the recruiting process.

What You'll Do

• Own the architecture of the API and data domain end to end: Hold expertise across the entirety of the team's products and services, including Java and Python services, the distributed event-driven systems they run on in AWS and Kubernetes, their relational and NoSQL data stores, and the consumers they serve. Architect for iterative, autonomous development and future scaling through clean service boundaries, contract design, clear data ownership, and well-sequenced migration paths.
• Set the API strategy: Define standards for API design, versioning, authentication, rate limiting, and documentation so that internal teams and external partners can build against our APIs with confidence. Near-term work includes piloting a certificate lookup API with a business admin console, launching a self-service developer portal, migrating legacy public API users, and consolidating API gateways under consistent rate limiting and bot protection.
• Build and evolve the collectibles data platform: Design the data models, pipelines, and access patterns that keep collectibles data accurate, consistent, and fast to query across product lines. Near-term work includes enriching spec data across all categories with measurable quality scoring, unifying overlapping spec databases across PSA, Beckett, and SGC, and exposing the result through a spec API.
• Set the bar for reliability and quality: Establish standards for testing strategy, observability, performance, and incident response, then use operational data to drive stability and latency improvements.
• Lead complex, multi-quarter delivery: Lead projects of moderate-to-significant scope spanning 1-2 quarters, coordinating engineers, stakeholders, and dependencies to a predictable landing. Plan using an explicit value-vs-cost framework so urgency and prioritization are easily understood by the team and stakeholders alike, and surface blockers and delays to the right people before they become surprises.
• Drive cross-functional execution: Translate business requirements into technical solutions and partner across Product, Marketplace, Grading, Vault, Data, and platform teams. Build a working model of adjacent systems, including CRM, identity, and data/ETL, so you catch cross-system risks early.
• Multiply the engineers around you: Mentor senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and feedback. Foster a culture of knowledge sharing and documentation within your team and with business stakeholders by initiating and facilitating meaningful discussions around complex issues.
• Lead an AI-first approach to building: Establish standards and guardrails for AI coding tools, including code review expectations, testing requirements, and security and IP hygiene. Identify where AI agents accelerate the team's work, and raise the org's collective AI fluency by sharing proven workflows and coaching engineers on when the tooling helps and when it misleads.

Who You Are

• 8+ years engineering experience, including demonstrated technical leadership of multi-engineer, multi-quarter projects. You have a track record of designing, shipping, and scaling products with measurable business impact at a high-growth company or a scaled consumer platform.
• Expert-level backend engineering in Java and Python. You have strong proficiency in Java (Spring Boot) and Python, own complex API surfaces, async patterns, and data consistency in distributed systems, and are recognized by peers and leaders as an authority in your domain.
• API design depth. You have designed and operated REST (and, where relevant, GraphQL or gRPC) APIs at scale, with strong judgment on versioning, backward compatibility, authentication, and developer experience.
• Deep database and data-modeling expertise, both relational (e.g. PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (e.g. DynamoDB). Schema design, migrations, query performance, and the realities of shared-database coupling between services. Experience with data ingestion and enrichment pipelines, and with API gateways such as Kong, is a plus.
• Strong distributed-systems fundamentals. Service boundaries, contract design, Kafka-based event-driven architectures, messaging, idempotency, and failure handling, designed and operated in production.
• Production AWS and Kubernetes depth, with infrastructure-as-code fluency (CDK and/or Terraform).
• Full-stack awareness. Enough hands-on experience with modern frontend frameworks such as React to design and review at every layer, even where others do the bulk of the implementation.
• A track record of raising engineering standards across testing strategy, observability, documentation, and incident response.
• Observability-first mindset. You instrument what you ship using Datadog or similar tools, build dashboards and alerting, and use distributed tracing to debug production issues.
• AI-first engineer. Daily fluency with AI coding assistants and agentic tools (Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor, or similar), experience integrating them into team workflows (CI, code review, documentation), and mature judgment about verification, security, and the limits of AI-generated code.
• Familiar with Agile/Scrum methodologies. You're comfortable working in iterative delivery cycles, participating in sprint planning, and adapting quickly to changing priorities.
• Influential communicator. Excellent written and verbal communication with technical and business audiences alike, with sharp analytical and troubleshooting instincts. You align engineers, product partners, and stakeholders without direct authority, make crisp calls, and bring people with you.
• Bias for ownership. You have an extreme ownership mindset and will wear any hat required to get the job done. You thrive in a fast-moving, self-directed environment: you set the bar, hold it, and take full accountability for outcomes.
• Passion for collecting is a plus.

Collectors uses e-Verify to validate your ability to work legally in the United States.

We are aware that there are instances where individuals are receiving job offers that fraudulently allege to be from Collectors or one of our business units. This type of fraud can be carried out through false websites, through fake e-mails claiming to be from the company or through social media. We never ask for personal information such as your bank account, Social Security numbers or National IDs, nor do we send or request payments for the purchase of business-related equipment. If you suspect fraud, please reach out to [email protected].

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, national origin, gender, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or parental status, disability, veteran status, or other class protected by applicable law. We believe that a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills will better service the diverse community of collectors we support.

If you require an accommodation to apply or interview with us due to a disability or special need, please email [email protected].

U.S. residents: for disclosures relating to personal information we collect during the employment application and recruitment process, please see ourPrivacy Notice for U.S. Applicants.

For New York Residents: In connection with hiring, Collectors Universe, Inc. uses an automated employment decision tool (Brighthire) to assist in evaluating candidates. Collectors Universe, Inc. began using this tool in October 2026.  In accordance with NYC Local Law 144, a summary of the most recent independent bias audit of this tool is available from Brighthire . To request information about the type of data collected, its source, and our data retention policy, contact [email protected].