Staff Software Engineer - Grading Operations

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.

About the Role

The Grading Operations software engineering team builds and operates the internal software that runs our grading and authentication business. That means the applications our operations teams work in every day, the services and APIs behind them, the scheduled and event-driven processes that move items through the grading lifecycle, and the integrations that connect all of it to adjacent systems across the platform. 

Volume climbs every year and the systems have kept up. As our grading operations reach more markets, keeping pace means solving for distance as well as volume.

This is a role for an engineer who wants projects that do not have an obvious solution yet. You will own complex, loosely defined projects, take the lead when they span other engineering teams, and help raise the design bar across the team. The breadth is unusual for one role: a containerized core application, serverless services, event-driven pipelines, and the applications our operations teams work in all day. You will still be building and shipping what you design, and AI tooling is central to how we work rather than something we are trying out.

What You'll Do

• Take on complex, loosely defined projects, including those that span other engineering teams, and own their design from first sketch to production

• Build backend services, APIs, and data models that power the internal applications our grading and authentication teams rely on every day

• Work across a mix of architectures, from a large containerized .NET application to smaller serverless APIs and Python background processing jobs, and help decide which is the right fit for new work

• Design and implement event-driven and asynchronous systems that keep operational data flowing reliably at high volume

• Mentor other engineers on the team through design review, code review, and the way you work through hard problems

• Contribute to frontend application development using JavaScript, TypeScript, and Vue.js to deliver features end to end

• Collaborate with Product, Tech, and Operations teams to translate business requirements into clean technical designs across both backend and frontend systems

• Troubleshoot data, integration, service, and UI issues across a large, long-lived codebase

• Share in an on-call rotation supporting the services the team owns

• Write design documents and technical decision records that other engineers build against

Who You Are

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building production applications, with deep experience in backend systems and some hands-on experience delivering frontend work

• 5+ years experience / strong proficiency in C# and .NET

• Routine use of AI tooling as part of how you design and build software, with the judgment to review and take responsibility for what it produces

• A track record of delivering projects where the requirements were unclear at the start and the right design was not obvious

• A history of mentoring strong engineers and visibly improving how a team designs and builds

• Experience designing and building RESTful APIs and service integrations

• Sound judgment about where code belongs, including how to draw module boundaries inside a large application and when a capability warrants its own service, and the ability to explain the calls you got wrong as clearly as the ones you got right

• Experience writing and maintaining automated tests for services running in production

• Strong fundamentals working with relational databases and data modeling (e.g. SQL Server, PostgreSQL)

• Hands-on experience building and operating production services in the cloud, including container orchestration (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, ECS), serverless compute behind an API gateway, and managed messaging and data stores

• Comfortable working in a modern frontend codebase, with hands-on experience in JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and a component-based framework

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform, CloudFormation), and monitoring and observability tooling (e.g. CloudWatch, Datadog)

• Design documents clear enough that the decision is obvious by the end of them

• Experience turning complex requirements from Product and Operations partners into clean, extensible systems

• Familiar with Agile/Scrum methodologies

Nice to Have

• Experience designing asynchronous, event-driven, and distributed systems, including systems that operate across regions

• Experience with any of AWS, Python (including test frameworks such as pytest or unittest), Apache Kafka, DynamoDB, or Vue.js

• Experience partnering closely with Product, and comfort working directly with the operations and business teams who use what you build

• Experience making high-volume workflows faster, in the interface or behind it, where shaving seconds off a repeated task adds up across thousands of items

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 interviewfraud@collectors.com.

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 interviewaccommodation@collectors.com

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