Meet: PlayHQ

• Founded: 2018
• Product: SportsTech SaaS product
• Head Count: 50
• Location: Melbourne CBD HQ
• Ways of working: Hybrid, 1-2 days a week at the office

Tech Stack @ PlayHQ

• Cloud: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes
• API/App: Golang, Typescript, GraphQL, gRPC, React, React Native, Microservices architecture, Service mesh
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Neo4j, Snowflake (data warehouse)
• Message Queues/Event Streaming: RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS (Simple Queue Service)
• Monitoring & Observability: Grafana, Sentry, DataDog
• Performance & Testing: k6 (performance testing), Load testing for high-traffic systems
• AI/ML Tools: LLMs for code generation, AI-assisted development practices, AI-driven architecture
• Architecture Patterns: Event-driven architectures, Distributed systems, Cloud-native architecture patterns, Resilient async systems

The Story

PlayHQ is on a mission to unleash the life-changing power of community sport. They are reinventing sport technology, replacing decades of unreliable legacy systems with a seamless, mobile-first digital experience.

They have built a strong foundation for a digital revolution in community sports. Now they’re entering a phase of rapid upscaling as they deliver innovative customer experiences, making it easier, faster, safer and more accessible for administrators, volunteers, players and participants to organise and take part in the sports they love.

The Impact You'll Have

Your code will touch 500,000+ people every single week. Not in abstract metrics, in real moments. A parent registering their kid for junior football. A volunteer coach managing their team on match day. An administrator coordinating an entire competition from their phone.

What Makes This Different

Real technical challenges at meaningful scale:

• Designing event-driven microservices that handle real-time match-day data for thousands of simultaneous games
• Solving complex multi-tenant architecture problems across different sports, each with unique business rules
• Building systems that need to be both bulletproof (volunteers depend on them) and fast (because community sport moves quickly)
• Working with modern backend tech: Golang, TypeScript, GraphQL, gRPC, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB, Neo4j

Fast growth, real ownership:

• This isn't a junior role on a large team. You're joining at a stage where your architectural decisions will shape how they scale. You'll own services end-to-end, influence product direction, and help build the engineering culture as they expand into new sports and markets.

Engineering culture that actually means it:

• We say "controlled chaos" because we're honest about the reality of scale-ups. But we're intentional about how we handle it, pragmatism over perfection, ownership over tickets, and psychological safety over ego. We're building something lean, bold, and collaborative, not a bureaucracy.

What You'll Actually Do

Beyond the usual "design and implement backend services" (yes, that too), here's what sets this apart:

In your first 30 days:

• You'll ship backend improvements to production with real impact
• Analyze their architecture and identify performance bottlenecks (fresh eyes are valuable)
• Start mentoring engineers on distributed systems patterns
• Lead technical design discussions that bring alignment across teams

By 60 days:

• Own end-to-end delivery of complex features across multiple services
• Make architectural decisions that directly improve how volunteers manage their sports
• Become the go-to person for distributed systems challenges
• Use production metrics to drive decisions, not opinions

By 90 days:

• Architect systems that enable their expansion into new sporting codes
• Lead performance optimization that measurably improves user experience during high-traffic periods
• Establish patterns and practices that other engineers adopt
• Build strong collaborative relationships with product and leadership

What's In It For You

Genuine career acceleration:

• Shape architecture and standards in a fast-scaling environment (experience that typically takes years elsewhere)
• Mentor other engineers without the management overhead, this is an IC role with leadership impact
• Work on genuinely complex problems: real-time data, multi-tenant complexity, high-availability requirements
• Stay technically sharp with modern tools and emerging tech (including AI-assisted development)

Work that feels good:

• Your on-call fixes help volunteers run competitions smoothly
• Your performance optimizations mean parents can register their kids without frustration
• Your reliability improvements prevent data loss during critical matches
• You're building infrastructure for community sport, the foundation of healthy, connected communities

Flexibility with purpose:

• Hybrid setup: 1 day/week in our Melbourne CBD office
• Team that values outcomes
• Environment where "growth mindset" isn't a poster on the wall, feedback is expected, failure is part of progress

What You Bring

We're looking for T-shaped product engineers: deep backend expertise with breadth across the stack.

Must haves:

• Strong backend engineering experience with languages like Golang or TypeScript
• Track record of designing and building scalable microservices
• Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and API design
• Database design and optimization skills (SQL and NoSQL)
• Ability to balance pragmatism with quality, shipping is a feature

What sets great candidates apart:

• You've mentored other engineers and enjoy it
• You think about the humans using the systems you build
• You're comfortable with ambiguity and can navigate it
• You challenge assumptions constructively, not combatively
• You've worked at scale-ups or fast-growth environments and thrived in that pace

Nice to have:

• Some frontend experience (React, TypeScript)
• Infrastructure as code and CI/CD experience
• Observability tools (Grafana, Sentry)
• Experience with sports tech, marketplace platforms, or multi-tenant SaaS

Their Values

• Community First: User experience always comes first. Your technical decisions impact real volunteers and participants.
• We Are Here For Each Other: We invest in peer success and psychological safety. Mentorship isn't optional.
• We Own It, We Get It Done: From concept to deployment, we take responsibility. Ownership isn't a buzzword—it's how we operate.

Sound Like You?

Hi 👋 We’re affix. If you're excited by technical challenges that matter, scale that's meaningful, and the chance to shape engineering culture at a growing company, then apply! I’d love to meet you!.

Please note: we are accepting applications during the holiday period and we will get back to you about the next steps. Interviews with affix will commence week commencing 12th of January.