Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform. We ignite the passions of global sports fans and maximize the presence and reach for our hundreds of sports partners globally by offering products and services across Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming, allowing sports fans to Buy, Collect, and Bet. Through the Fanatics platform, sports fans can buy licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods; collect physical and digital trading cards, sports memorabilia, and other digital assets; and bet as the company builds its Sportsbook and iGaming platform. Fanatics has an established database of over 100 million global sports fans; a global partner network with approximately 900 sports properties, including major national and international professional sports leagues, players associations, teams, colleges, college conferences and retail partners, 2,500 athletes and celebrities, and 200 exclusive athletes; and over 2,000 retail locations, including its Lids retail stores. Our more than 22,000 employees are committed to relentlessly enhancing the fan experience and delighting sports fans globally.
Fanatics Betting & Gaming (FBG) is seeking a Senior Manager to lead our Platform Engineering team in the US. This position plays a critical role within the Platform Engineering organization, partnering closely with teams across the United States, UK, and Ireland to own and operate the platforms that power Fanatics Betting & Gaming’s global software ecosystem.
As a Senior Manager, you will own technical delivery, team growth, and operational excellence across areas such as cloud infrastructure (AWS/Kubernetes), CI/CD and release engineering, observability, and developer tooling – operating with a product-first mindset that treats developers as customers. FBG Engineering is projected to grow over 20% in 2026, supporting nearly 200 engineers and over 1,100 services and applications. The platform has moved past its 0–1 phase; the focus now is on second-order, high-leverage problems — developer experience at service-sprawl scale, intelligent AI integration into existing workflows, and durable architectural improvements that compound over time.
What You’ll Do
- Lead, grow, and coach a Platform Engineering team, hiring and developing engineers from junior through staff level.
- Own roadmap delivery and technical quality for platform capabilities spanning cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability, and developer tooling.
- Champion a “platform as a product” mindset — treat internal developers as customers, gather feedback, and prioritize based on developer experience (DevEx) impact.
- Own operational excellence for the team's services: on-call philosophy, incident response, and blameless post-mortems, fostering psychological safety after production incidents.
- Evaluate build-vs-buy decisions for internal tooling versus third-party SaaS solutions.
- Operate within a regulated environment — ensure delivery speed does not compromise compliance or security requirements (e.g., GLI, state/country betting & gaming regulations) in CI/CD and infrastructure changes.
- Evaluate and help roll out AI-assisted engineering tools (e.g., AI coding assistants, log analysis) across the distributed team without compromising security.
- Communicate platform health, roadmap, and outcomes clearly to engineering leadership and stakeholders using business and platform success metrics.
What You Bring
- Proven experience directly managing platform engineering teams (not solely adjacent teams such as database enablement or generalist backend teams).
- Strong hands-on background with cloud infrastructure (AWS), Kubernetes, and CI/CD / release engineering, sufficient to credibly review architecture and technical proposals.
- Demonstrated people-management strengths: coaching and mentorship, performance management, and fostering psychological safety.
- Experience in building and communicating a multi-quarter strategic roadmap for a platform organization — translating business priorities and DevEx signals into a sequenced set of investments, and defending tradeoffs against competing stakeholder demands.
Nice to Have
- Experience in a regulated industry (e.g., betting & gaming, fintech) balancing delivery speed with compliance and security requirements.
- FinOps experience — cost/complexity tradeoffs for large-scale Kubernetes environments.
- Experience evaluating or rolling out AI-assisted developer tooling (e.g., GitHub Copilot, AI-driven log analysis) across an engineering organization.
- Familiarity with core Platform Engineering languages and infrastructure at FBG: Python, Go, Terraform, Postgres/RDS, Kafka, Redis.
Depending on the role, your interview and onboarding experience may include in-person components, such as onsite interviews or Launching into Better: LIVE—a multi-day cultural immersion in New York City for full-time, non-seasonal hires. These sessions are designed to build connection and bring our culture to life, though specific travel and participation requirements will be confirmed based on your role and location. Your recruiter will provide clear guidance at each stage of the process.
For information about our benefits, please visit https://benefitsatfanatics.com/
By submitting your application, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our Candidate Privacy Policy.
