Sports Operations Engineer

Sports Operations Engineer - Kalshi

Kalshi is defining a new category

Kalshi has defined a new category: prediction markets. Kalshi allows people to trade on the outcome of any events and turn any question about the future into a financial asset. Kalshi fought for years and legalized prediction markets in the US for the first time in history. Kalshi is currently the fastest growing financial market in America, and has thousands of markets across politics, economics, financials, weather, tech, AI, culture and more.

We believe prediction markets have the potential to be the largest financial market because they turn anything into a financial position.

Our vision: well… build the largest financial market on the planet.

Our mission: bring more truth to the world through the power of markets.

Building a new category is hard… like really hard. But it's beautiful and deeply fulfilling. Our culture is simple: we hire really talented people, work really hard, and enjoy the climb. We are looking for ambitious and exceptional people to join our (relatively small) team to help us build the next generation of financial markets.

Role Roadmap

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; your initial responsibilities will include:

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.

Qualifications

To excel in this role, you should possess the following qualifications and skills:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or related technical field.

• 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 sports trading 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.

NYC Pay Transparency Disclosure

Salary Range: $100,000 to $150,000 annually plus equity and benefits. This salary range is based on the current available market data, and represents the expected salary range for this role. Kalshi has minimal hierarchy and few titles, but has broad ranges of experience represented within roles. Should you have compensation expectations that exceed these bands, we'd love to hear from you and would welcome you to reach out to further discuss.

Our Culture

Meritocracy is at our core, and we value people who take ownership and figure (usually hard) things out. We dream big. We love our craft deeply and are proud of what we put out in the world. We are committed to our vision of building something big… but also useful: a product that brings more truth through the power of markets.

Kalshians are Kalshi's most important asset: we pick Kalshians carefully, so we trust them fully on day 1.

Commitment to Equal Opportunity

Kalshi is committed to creating a culture of inclusion and belonging, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We believe it is our collective responsibility to uphold these values and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to join us in our mission. All qualified applicants will be treated with respect and receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, uniform service, veteran status, age, or any other protected characteristic per federal, state, or local law. If you are passionate about what you do and want to use your talents to support our mission and values, we'd love to hear from you.