VP Engineering, Sports Data

A bit about us:  

Do you want to join one of the world’s fastest growing sports technology companies? Genius Sports is at the epicentre of the global network connecting sports, brands and fans through official live data. Our mission is simple. We champion a more sustainable sports data ecosystem that benefits all parties.  

We’re looking for enthusiastic and ambitious people to join our talented team.   

If you see yourself becoming part of a global family building the future of sports entertainment together, then come and grow with us. We put trust in our people to deliver the difference for our clients around the world. It’s why many of the world’s largest leagues & federations such as the NFL, English Premier League, FIBA and NCAA choose to work with Genius Sports.  

The Role: VP Engineering, Sports Data 

The Genius Sports Engineering Team is looking for a smart, talented, and experienced VP of Engineering to lead our Modern Data Platform initiatives. The VP of Engineering will manage a team of engineering managers and will oversee our work with architects, developers, testers, and operations to build, enhance, and maintain our big data pipelines in support of our betting, broadcast, and fan engagement offerings.

The ideal candidate will have experience working on big data and have deep familiarity with high volume web services/APIs, and expertise in real- time streaming of high-volume transactions across various domains/environments across the internet. They will have experience in database design/architecture particularly working in highly distributed/cloud-based environments and have the capacity to partner with our operations team on the ongoing maintenance of our data infrastructure.

Additionally, the candidate will be well versed in modern methods for low-latency, real-time, data ingress, data transformation/normalization, and data egress with an ability to build self-service tools that can be used by non-developers in areas such as applying business logic, making data corrections/updates, etc.

In addition to working with telemetry and transactional data, the candidate should have experience working with user data (both anonymized and authenticated) and be comfortable with privacy by design methods associated with managing personally identifiable information.

This role is based in our recently opened, global center, New York City office. Located in midtown Manhattan, amongst the iconic skyline, you'll be immersed in cultural richness that inspires innovation and creativity. Join our team and add your talents to building a hub for all of Genius Sports.

Job Responsibilities:

Specific responsibilities for the VP Engineering, Sports Data and his/her team include the following:

Build, Maintain, and Evolve our Data Collection Tools

• Partner with our Sports Tech /Data Collection teams to understand and support requirements for building human and computer-vision driven tools for collecting real-time sporting event data (passes, rushes, touchdowns, turnovers, etc.) at the team and individual player level
• Rationalize our various data collection tools to minimize the number of those being utilized/supported including sunsetting legacy tools, migrating customers off of those tools, evolving current tools, and building new tools where necessary 

Maintain & Modernize our Data Pipeline(s)

• Identify and analyze data sources (fixtures data, odds data, player and match data, product usage data, customer data, etc.) for onboarding and work with data source owners to understand data attributes available, value of onboarding this data; and methods for doing so;
• Design, build, and maintain a robust, real-time big data pipeline to collect, aggregate, transform, and make available terabytes of rich betting, sports event, customer and product data/intelligence
• Design and implement processes for cleaning and transforming various data/data sources to ensure consistency, usability, and compliance
• Build robust end-to-end monitoring, alerting, and reporting capabilities to assist in maintaining highly functional, low latency, performant data processing
• Ensure all aspects of ETL design and data storage/retention align with defined best practices and Genius Sports internal security/privacy standards

 Data Warehousing & Reporting Tools

• Work with a variety of stakeholders (marketing, business/customer intelligence, product planning, etc.) to understand their business needs and make data available for analysis and consumption
• Design our warehousing architecture for key data sources such as fixtures data, odds data, player and match data, product usage data, customer data, etc
• Partner with our BI teams to build self-serve reporting tools (dashboards, cubes, etc.) to enable a broad set of stakeholders to access and mine our customer & product intelligence for insights on who our customers are and how they use our products & services
• Evaluate, select, and integrate advanced analytical tools (e.g., SAS, R, etc.) to allow our data scientists to mine and model our customer data and build predictive models to drive our betting business and personalized fan engagement.
• Build, Maintain, and Evolve our Data Distribution Tools
• Working with a variety of stakeholders (sports betting, fan engagement, advertising, leagues/teams, etc.) to understand their business needs and make data available for consumption through a variety of push/pull mechanisms
• Create and own the API technical strategy, reviewing with domain experts and business stakeholders to ensure we can support the evolving needs of our data consumers
• Partnering with our advertising and genius marketing suite stakeholders (product & engineering) to enable audience management, segmentation, and targeting capabilities for to personalized ads and experiences at scale

Leadership

• Build, coach and lead a team of high-performing, passionate, engineers, able to execute quickly without sacrificing quality
• Bring an ownership mindset to the table. Enable a team-first culture, where teams feel secure to iterate, fail and learn rapidly with accountability
• Ensure the team has the right resources, skills and time, managing stakeholders effectively to ensure that we can build a high-quality data product to support the organization

Position Requirements 

• 10+ years of relevant data management experience (master data, metadata, data architecture, data governance, data quality)
• Ability to architect a modern Enterprise Data Pipeline and provide business, governance and technical recommendations
• Experience with conceptualization, design and assistance in the implementation of new and existing systems, middleware, MDM, metadata, data quality, data warehouse and production architectures
• Experience with Big Data and working on big data and have deep familiarity with high volume web services/APIs
• Expertise in real-time data streaming systems, ideally from a high transaction volume industry (e.g., financial/banking, online services, retail, etc.)
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases. Excellent knowledge of performance tuning and designing schemas for performance, reliability and maintainability
• Proven background building out BI/reporting solutions on top of EMR or other big data solutions (e.g., Hbase, PowerBI, R, etc.)
• Excellent leadership skills and line-management skills for distributed teams in a business that operates at scale

What’s in it for you?  

As well as a competitive salary and annual leave allowance, our benefits include health insurance, skills training and much more, depending on the location. We also offer a host of softer benefits, including many social events throughout the year such as summer and winter holiday parties, monthly team building events, sports tournaments, charity days and wellbeing activities.    

The salary for this role is based on an annualized range of $280,000 - $360,000 USD. This role will also be eligible to take part in Genius Sports Group's benefits plan.

How we work:  

We have adapted a forward-thinking ‘Ways of Working’ framework, which sets out (amongst other things) the opportunities for Geniuses to work flexibly and on working holidays. It affects different teams and locations differently, so please ask for further information in how it would work with this role.  

Our employees are empowered to stretch the boundaries of what’s achievable, always reaching further and pushing the edges to see what gives. We collaborate, we innovate, and we celebrate. We will continue to grow as an organization and continue to invest in our highly talented and diverse team of Geniuses.   

Genius Sports Group is proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We recognize and celebrate the benefits that a diverse and inclusive workforce bring to our business, our customers and our staff. We welcome and will consider all applications regardless of age, different abilities or disability, gender reassignment, marriage, pregnancy, maternity, race or nationality, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation (and any other applicable status). Please let us know when you apply if you need any assistance during the recruiting process due to a disability.