Prediction market and sports betting exchange processing billions in annual volume
Smarkets operates a global prediction market exchange handling over $1 billion in annual volume across more than 1 million customers. The tech stack reveals a high-performance, infrastructure-first organization: Kafka + Postgres + Kubernetes form the core, with performance-critical systems written in Rust and C++17, and they're actively migrating legacy services away from Erlang and C++ toward Rust. Current project focus on scaling throughput 5x, transitioning from monolithic to horizontally scalable architecture, and maintaining ultra-low latency in a distributed trading engine signals an engineering team optimizing for exchange reliability and market depth rather than user acquisition.
Smarkets is a licensed prediction market and sports betting exchange founded in 2008, operating in regulated markets worldwide. The platform aggregates liquidity from over 1 million customers and institutions, pricing uncertain events—from sports outcomes to political events—through an exchange model rather than fixed-odds or payout-based betting. The company is technology-driven, built on Linux, Kafka, Postgres, and Kubernetes, with engineers distributed across London and Malta. Core business value comes from proprietary market-making technology, liquidity depth, and exchange design; the team prioritizes infrastructure reliability and API accessibility for both retail and institutional participants.
Core infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Linux. Performance-critical systems in Rust and C++17. Product surfaces in Python and React. Monitoring via Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch. Analytics through Lightdash, Tableau, Looker.
Scaling throughput 5x and transitioning from monolithic to horizontally scalable architecture. Building an internal developer platform and real-time distributed exchange systems. Migrating legacy services to Rust and deploying cloud-native infrastructure on AWS.
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