Product Manager, Applied AI & CV

PlayOn; United States; Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid/flexible work environment

Company equity (stock options)

Open PTO policy

401K plan with company match

Job summary

PlayOn Sports is seeking a Product Manager for Pipelines to own how data from AI models and external vendors is stored and delivered to customers. You’ll shape data flows across video, metadata, and insights.

In a fast-evolving environment, you’ll manage vendor relationships, define requirements, design data pipelines, and align a sport-by-sport roadmap with stakeholders. Growth-focused, you’ll collaborate with Vision and Pipelines teams to ensure reliable data delivery and governance across

Qualifications

• 3+ years of product management experience with technical, data, API, or platform products.
• Technical fluency to read API docs, understand data flows and integration issues.
• Experience owning an API, data product, or other technical product serving internal or external customers.
• Experience managing multiple external partners or vendors and holding them to defined requirements.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for audiences with varying technical levels.
• Proactive approach to product and data quality, monitoring and validation to prevent downstream issues.
• Curiosity about team sports and willingness to develop sport-specific knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate external vendors for high-quality player highlights and build pipelines to productize them.
• Design data pipelines to govern AI and CV data for customer-facing products.
• Own day-to-day vendor operations, testing, releases, and performance tracking.
• Define requirements and quality standards for incoming video, metadata, and third-party data.
• Design and own how Streaming Intelligence data is delivered via APIs, events, and interfaces.
• Prioritize and sequence work across multiple sports and vendors with a defensible roadmap.
• Own decisions within Pipelines and advise on larger product decisions as expertise grows.
• Partner with the Streaming Intelligence Lead, Pipelines Eng Lead, and cross-functional teams.

Skills

Product management

Technical fluency

Vendor management

Communication

Cross-functional collaboration

Data product experience

Tools

APIs

Data pipelines

Vendor contracts

Job description

PlayOn Sports processes more than 250,000 live high school sports games annually across NFHS Network, GoFan, and MaxPreps. Through its high-priority Streaming Intelligence initiative, PlayOn uses computer vision and AI to transform those streams into real-time scores, player-level statistics, automated highlights, and coaching tools. The goal is to make meaningful moments easier for fans, families, and coaches to find, watch, and share while giving high school athletes greater opportunities to improve their game, showcase their performance, and be discovered.

Streaming Intelligence operates through two teams: Vision, which builds the computer vision and machine learning models, and Pipelines, which moves and delivers the resulting data. This Product Manager will sit within Pipelines and own how data from PlayOn’s models and external vendors is reliably stored and delivered into the products customers use. The role operates in a fast-evolving technical environment that includes both frontier AI providers and PlayOn-hosted infrastructure, as well as a rapidly changing sports computer vision vendor landscape.

The outcomes you’ll deliver

• Evaluate external vendors for ability to deliver high-quality player highlights across new sports and then build the pipeline to productize those highlights.
• Design new data pipelines that disseminate and govern complex AI and CV data to the customer facing parts of our business.

In this role, you can expect to

• Vendor Operations: Own day-to-day relationships with computer vision vendors like MaxPreps Advantage and Pixellot, coordinate testing and releases, troubleshoot issues, and track vendor commitments, delivery, schema changes, and performance for future renewals.
• Inbound Data: Define requirements and quality standards for incoming video, metadata, and third-party intelligence, including how issues are detected quickly.
• Outbound Data: Help design and then own how Streaming Intelligence data is delivered to internal teams through APIs, events, and other interfaces, ensuring clear and consistent data expectations.
• Sport-by-Sport Roadmap: Prioritize and sequence work across football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, baseball, and vendors; identify dependencies early and maintain a defensible roadmap.
• Product Ownership: Own decisions within Pipelines, bring well-supported recommendations on larger decisions, and take on greater decision-making responsibility as expertise grows.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner closely with the Streaming Intelligence Product Lead, Pipelines Engineering Lead, Pipelines Project Manager, Vision team, downstream product teams, and external vendors.
• Operate in Ambiguity: Help establish ownership, processes, and Product/Engineering ways of working within a new, high-investment AI initiative where responsibilities and workstreams are still evolving.

To thrive in this role, you have

• 3+ years of product management experience, ideally working with technical, data, API, or platform products and turning stakeholder needs into clear product requirements.
• Technical fluency to read API documentation, understand data flows and integration issues, and communicate problems clearly to engineers and external partners.
• Experience owning an API, data product, or other technical product serving internal or external customers.
• Experience managing multiple external partners or vendors and holding them accountable to clearly defined requirements and commitments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical information for audiences with varying levels of technical expertise.
• A proactive approach to product and data quality—you look for ways to identify problems through monitoring and validation before they impact downstream teams or customers.
• Curiosity about team sports and a willingness to develop the sport-specific knowledge necessary to make sound product decisions.

Nice to have

• Experience in sports, media, or streaming.
• Exposure to computer vision, machine learning, or AI-powered products.
• Experience reviewing vendor contracts, SLAs, or technical integration agreements.

How You Play

Ownership over Participation: You take responsibility for holistic outcomes, prioritize key objectives, adapt quickly, and follow through against the toughest challenges.

Team over Stars: You are a bridge builder, rallying teams around common goals, finding win-win solutions, and helping others succeed.

Growth over Comfort: You actively seek to expand your comfort zone and skills, embracing new challenges and treating failure as a chance to learn.

Fairness over Popularity: You approach decisions with a scientist’s mindset, stay objective, weigh long-term impact, and seek out other perspectives.

PlayOn is where high school sports come to life. Through GoFan, NFHS Network, and MaxPreps, we give every fan a front-row seat to the moments that matter most: the buzzer-beaters, the comeback wins, the senior nights, the rivalries that define a town.

We built our technology for the people who live and breathe high school athletics — the parents who never miss a game, the alumni still cheering from across the country, the communities that show up week after week. From buying tickets to watching a live stream to reliving the highlights, we make it simple to stay close to the sports and the athletes you love most.

Backed by KKR, we build the technology that powers high school athletics from the inside out: Schools trust us to handle ticketing, streaming, fundraising, concessions, merchandise, and more so the people running programs can stay focused on the athletes and fans we all serve together.

We're a growth-stage company on a mission to make high school sports more accessible, more memorable, and more connected than ever before.

When being there means everything, we make sure you never miss a moment.

Why You’ll Love Working at PlayOn

Product, potential, and people. We’re a leader in the high school event space, constantly evolving our product to meet the needs of administrators. We focus on solving real challenges, learning quickly, and creating impactful solutions.

This is a growth-stage company, meaning your contributions have real impact. You’ll have opportunities to grow your skills, tackle meaningful problems, and make a difference in the lives of schools and the students and fans they serve.

Our culture is built on accountability, collaboration, growth, and fairness. We don’t just show up-we show up for each other. Everyone wears the same jersey, and we play hard, make the extra pass, and cheer one another on. Losses teach us, challenges motivate us, and persistence drives us forward. We value integrity over shortcuts, choosing to do what’s right even when it’s hard. Together, we strive to be better every day—because we know that’s how we win as a team.

The Benefits We Offer

Multiple medical insurance plans to choose from

Dental, vision life and disability insurance

Employee Emergency Fund

Company equity (stock options)

Open PTO policy

401K plan with company match

Hybrid/flexible work environment

Note: Must be a full-time employee to participate in the company’s employee health benefit plan. Part-time employees and interns are not eligible to participate