Vice President, Data Systems

The Los Angeles Lakers; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 275,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

The Los Angeles Lakers are seeking a Vice President, Data Systems in El Segundo, CA. This role provides strategic leadership for data, software engineering, and enterprise infrastructure across basketball operations, analytics, performance, medical, and business functions.

The Lakers offer a high-impact, collaborative environment with a focus on scalable data platforms. You will drive the technical vision, governance, and security while managing a multidisciplinary team and aligning data

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline is required.
• Master’s degree is preferred.
• Extensive leadership of data engineering, software development and enterprise tech initiatives.
• At least 10 years of relevant experience with 5+ in leadership roles.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical vision and engineering standards for Data Systems.
• Own end-to-end architecture of the cloud data platform and pipelines.
• Lead design, development and delivery of internal web and mobile apps.
• Coordinate data models, APIs and service layers across departments.
• Ensure production-ready infrastructure with security and reliability.

Skills

Technical Leadership

Data Governance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineer, Data Science, Information Systems, or related

Master’s degree in computer science, Data Engineering, or related field

10+ years experience in data engineering, software development, and enterprise tech initiatives

5+ years in technical leadership or management

Tools

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud

ETL/ELT pipelines

Job description

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Vice President, Data Systems

Basketball Ops - Analytics Full Time El Segundo, CA, US

Salary Range: $275,000.00 To $300,000.00 Annually

Job Title:Vice President, Data Systems

Department:Basketball Analytics

Reports to:Assistant General Manager, Strategy & Data Systems

Position Summary:The Vice President, Data Systems will provide strategic and technical leadership for the organization’s data, software engineering, and technology infrastructure, overseeing the design, development, and continuous improvement of enterprise data platforms, applications, and systems. This role is responsible for establishing the technical vision, architecture, and engineering standards that enable the seamless collection, integration, management, and delivery of data across basketball operations, analytics, performance, medical, and business functions. The Vice President will drive technology strategy, data governance, system reliability, and product innovation while ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, and aligned with organizational priorities. Additionally, this role will lead and develop a multidisciplinary engineering and product team, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.

Essential Functions (Duties & Responsibilities**):

• Technical Leadership for the Organization: Set the technical vision and engineering standards for Data Systems across data engineering, web and mobile development, and platform infrastructure. Make sure each system and the overall architecture is reliable, scalable and secure, and that it optimally serves coaches, front office, scouts, medical and performance staff, and players.
• Data Platform Architecture: Own the end-to-end architecture of the organization’s cloud data platform, including ingestion, transformation, storage and serving layers. This covers NBA and non-NBA data, player tracking and motion capture, scouting and qualitative data, and health, performance, and wearables data. Support and direct the ongoing move to modern, production-grade infrastructure (e.g. medallion architecture, orchestrated pipelines, lineage tracking) so analysts and modelers get curated, validated, and development-ready datasets.
• Product and Application Development: Lead the design, development and delivery of internal web and mobile applications that optimally funnel data and model outputs to decision makers. Oversee product management across the Lakers enterprise, turning user needs into prioritized roadmaps, intuitive interfaces and production-caliber releases, with attention to usability, accessibility, offline and travel use, and adoption across departments.
• Inter-Department Integration: Make sure Data Systems engineering serves the collective needs of the Performance Strategy, Analytics Strategy, and Cap Strategy divisions. Build shared data models, APIs, and service layers so information moves from collection to analysis to application, without duplicated effort. Establishing consistent and reliable sources of truth is critical.
• Engineering Excellence and Operations: Set and enforce software and data engineering best practices: version control, code review, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, automated testing, observability and incident response. Treat data, ML, and application infrastructure as production software, with clear service-level expectations for uptime, latency and data freshness, especially for time-sensitive periods including gameday, draft, and trade deadline.
• Data Governance, Security, and Quality Control: Set organizational standards for data access, permission management, encryption, data retention, and audit trails. These standards make sure sensitive athlete, medical and transaction data complies with NBA, CBA and organizational security and privacy requirements. Oversee validation frameworks, schema enforcement, and automated quality monitoring.
• Technology Planning: Own the long-term roadmap for data and software infrastructure. That includes evaluating build-versus-buy decisions, data vendors and feed providers, cloud storage and compute strategy, and emerging tools such as vector databases, ML platforms and AI-assisted development. Manage the division’s technology budget, vendor contracts and cloud spend to ensure interoperability, security, and return on investment with an eye to emerging technologies.
• Staff Management: Recruit, develop and manage a multidisciplinary team of data engineers, developers and full-stack engineers, product and design staff, and platform/DevOps engineers. Set goals, define career ladders and technical growth paths, mentor staff, and build a culture of ownership, documentation and close collaboration with analysts and end users.

**Responsibilities subject to change based on organizational needs and direction from management.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineer, Data Science, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline required
• Master’s degree in computer science, Data Engineering, or related field preferred
• Significant progressive experience leading data engineering, software development, and enterprise technology initiatives, including experience managing multidisciplinary technical teams
• Ten (10) plus years of relevant professional experience with at least five (5) years in a technical leadership or management capacity

Technology Capabilities:

• Deep understanding of modern data architecture, data engineering principles, cloud-based data platforms, and enterprise technology infrastructure.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) and modern data warehousing
• Strong knowledge of data integration, ETL/ELT pipelines, orchestration, APIs, data modeling, and data governance frameworks.
• Experience overseeing software engineering and application development, including web and mobile applications, full-stack development, and product lifecycle management.
• Knowledge of data security, privacy, access controls, encryption, and compliance practices, particularly when managing sensitive employee, athlete, medical, and organizational data.
• Ability to translate complex technical concepts into practical solutions that support organizational strategy and end-user needs.

Location:El Segundo (offices M-F), occasional off-site events, Crypto.com Arena for Lakers home games when necessary

Travel:Less than 10% of the time (league events, etc.)

Hours:Regular office hours (9am – 5:30pm M-F)

The pay range for this role is $275,000 - $300,000 annually. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience and certifications. In addition to those factors, we consider the relative pay of our current employees in similar positions when making a final offer.

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital or veteran status, or any other protected class.