VP, Engineering, Data & MarTech

Fanatics

San Mateo (CA)

Hybrid

USD 300,000 - 375,000

Full time

4 days ago

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Job summary

Fanatics in San Mateo, CA seeks a VP of Engineering for Data & MarTech to lead three integrated domains: digital marketing engineering, martech/CRM, and a data/BI platform. You will shape technical direction, manage senior teams across multiple locations, and drive AI-enabled growth strategies that power fan engagement at scale.

This role reports to the SVP of Engineering and requires bold, data-driven leadership, strong collaboration with finance and product, and a track record of delivering

Qualifications

15+ years in engineering with growth/acquisition focus.
Experience leading martech, CRM/lifecycle platforms and data/BI modernization.
Proven ability to manage distributed teams across time zones.
Fluency translating between marketers, execs, and engineers.

Responsibilities

Own customer-acquisition economics for Fanatics' largest paid channels.
Drive the martech/CRM stack toward closed-loop messaging across channels.
Accelerate AI-native acquisition surfaces and semantic BI for self-serve analytics.
Architect a unified lifecycle platform across channels for fast, data-driven decisions.
Provide operating model where lifecycle and data/BI function as one organization.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Growth marketing engineering

MarTech

CRM lifecycle

Data analytics

People management

AI in marketing

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Job description

Fanatics Commerce is the global leader in licensed sports merchandise, operating a vertically integrated platform that designs, manufactures, and delivers officially licensed apparel, jerseys, headwear, and collectibles for major leagues, teams, and events worldwide. With more than 900 e-commerce sites and a global omnichannel presence across digital, in-venue, and retail, Fanatics Commerce reaches fans in over 180 countries and powers official fan experiences for many of the world's most iconic sports properties.

VP, Engineering, Data & MarTech

Role Overview

This is a VP-scope engineering leadership role owning three integrated domains: digital marketing and acquisition engineering (including 130+ orchestrated pipelines, paid-media integrations, and emerging GenAI acquisition surfaces), martech and CRM/lifecycle engineering (multi-channel orchestration across email, SMS, and app push powered by Adobe Experience Platform, Journey Optimizer, and XtremePush), and the data, BI, and experimentation platform that both organizations depend on. Reporting to the SVP of Engineering, this leader sets technical direction across all three domains and leads distributed senior engineering teams spanning San Matero, Hyderabad, Brazil, and remote locations. The VP, Growth & Marketing Technology Engineering delivers business and fan impact through BOLD leadership and execution excellence, leveraging data, automation, and AI-enabled insights.

How Will You Drive Impact

Success is measured by the ability to deliver results through BOLD capabilities and measurable outcomes.

Team & Leadership Impact (Build Championship Teams)

Cross-Functional Leadership

Align marketing, product, data science, finance, and privacy stakeholders around a unified technical direction across acquisition, lifecycle, and data-platform domains, without formal authority over most of them.
Partner with marketing science to stand up the data and activation foundations for incrementality and MMM/MTA measurement, and translate roadmap trade-offs fluently to Finance, the Chief Merchandising Officer, and executive leadership.
Establish a clear operating model with senior engineering leaders so lifecycle and data/BI function as one integrated organization, not two separate teams.

People Leadership

Lead through senior engineering managers across distributed time zones (San Mateo, Hyderabad, Brazil, and remote), operating as a deliberate manager-of-managers who designs org structures and reporting lines intentionally.
Hire, develop, and retain senior engineering leaders — with a demonstrated track record of growing people into greater scope and keeping them.
Build and sustain a high-performance engineering culture grounded in evidence-based experimentation, continuous improvement, and psychological safety across a globally distributed team.

Fan & Customer Impact (Obsessed with Fans)

Own the customer-acquisition economics behind Fanatics' largest paid channels — PLA/Shopping and paid social foremost — ensuring the high-throughput systems that power audience targeting, product feeds, and value-based bidding translate directly into fan acquisition at scale.
Drive the martech and CRM/lifecycle stack toward decisioned, channel-agnostic, closed-loop messaging across email, SMS, and app push that ties every send to measurable fan-engagement and revenue outcomes.
Accelerate the shift to AI-native acquisition surfaces — including GenAI-era product feeds, agentic keyword and ops automation, and social commerce — so Fanatics reaches fans through the channels and formats emerging in real time.
Build the semantic and BI layer to be trustworthy enough to answer both human operators and AI agents, pushing self-serve analytics well past dashboards toward conversational, insight-driven experiences for the teams that serve fans every day.

Innovation & Problem Solving (Limitless Entrepreneurial Spirit)

Move first with evidence in an unsettled AI-driven landscape — stand up small, measured experiments on AI-native marketing approaches, read the results, and scale what works rather than waiting for a proven playbook.
Push paid-media diversification beyond Google and Meta by using incremental measurement foundations to de-risk and prove out new channels, expanding Fanatics' acquisition surface as the channel-economics landscape shifts.
Architect the path from a fragmented engagement stack to a unified, channel-agnostic lifecycle platform — consolidating identity, consent, and decisioning layers while the business continues to ship at speed.
Drive the BI and data platform toward a modern, lower-TCO foundation — retiring or consolidating legacy systems on committed migration milestones while pushing the semantic layer toward AI-enabled self-serve.

Ownership & Execution (Determined & Relentless Mindset)

Move marketing efficiency (ROAS/CAC) and lifecycle-driven revenue on named campaigns, not dashboards — with a credible, defensible plan to protect both as AI reshapes acquisition and attribution.
Ship a meaningful step toward closed-loop, channel-agnostic lifecycle messaging across at least two channels within the first 12 months, driving measurable revenue impact from the consolidated stack.
Bank a data-platform cost-takeout that survives contact with the roadmap — owning the cost curve of the data and BI platform as a core accountability, not a secondary concern.
Communicate in writing with a precision that moves decisions, and build executive confidence in a technical direction before the results are fully in — especially in an environment where AI is rewriting the rules of acquisition, attribution, and channel economics simultaneously.

AI & DIGITAL CAPABILITY

We are building a future-ready organization. This role is expected to:

Apply AI and technology to improve efficiency, quality, and outcomes
Use data and digital tools to inform decisions and enhance performance
Demonstrate curiosity and adaptability in adopting new technologies and ways of working
Contribute to a culture of innovation and continuous improvement

Required Qualifications

CAPABILITIES & EXPERIENCE YOU BRING

15+ years in engineering with a track record built specifically in growth, acquisition, or marketing-technology engineering at consumer scale — including hands‑on fluency across the Google and Meta paid-media ecosystems and the data depth to be credible on attribution, experimentation, and channel optimization.
Demonstrated ownership of customer-acquisition economics against real revenue targets at a large consumer organization — having sat on the business side of martech, not just built the systems, and used modern customer-data and measurement capabilities to make spend and lifecycle decisions pay off.
Experience leading a martech or CRM/lifecycle platform consolidation, a BI/experimentation modernization, or an equivalent build/transform effort that shipped while the business kept running.
Proven operator as a manager-of-managers who has built, structured, and run distributed engineering organizations across time zones — with specific examples of senior leaders hired, developed, and retained.
Fluency translating between marketers, executive stakeholders, and staff engineers — able to defend a technical bet to a Chief Merchandising Officer and a re-platforming trade-off to Finance in the same conversation.
Demonstrated ability to hold influence across marketing, product, data science, finance, and privacy stakeholders without formal authority, aligning competing agendas around a shared technical direction.
Experience building or accelerating AI-native engineering practices — agentic workflows, AI-assisted SDLC, model gateways, or evals/observability — applied to growth or marketing-technology domains.

Education

Bachelor's degree required, ideally in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field. A master's degree (MS or MBA) that deepens either the technical or the business-and-commercial dimension of the role is a plus.

WORK LOCATION

Hybrid: The primary place of performance of this role is the Company's office located in San Mateo, CA, subject to the Company's current hybrid work policy. This role currently requires in-office presence 3 days per week.

At Fanatics, we operate with a BOLD mindset—We Build Championship Teams, we're Obsessed with Fans, we embrace a Limitless Entrepreneurial Spirit, and we approach every challenge with a Determined & Relentless Mindset. If you're ready to contribute to a dynamic, fast-paced environment that thrives on collaboration and growth, we want you to be part of our team.

The salary range represents base pay only and does not include short-term or long-term incentive compensation. When determining base pay as part of a final compensation package, we consider several factors such as location, experience, qualifications, and training. For information about our benefits, please visit https://benefitsatfanatics.com/.

Salary Range

$300,000 - $375,000 USD

About Us

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.

About The Team

Fanatics Commerce is a leading designer, manufacturer, and seller of licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods. It operates a vertically-integrated platform of digital and physical capabilities for leading sports leagues, teams, colleges, and associations globally – as well as its flagship site, www.fanatics.com.

Fanatics Commerce has a broad range of online, sports venue, and vertical apparel partnerships worldwide, including comprehensive partnerships with leading leagues, teams, colleges, and sports organizations across the world—including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, Formula 1, and Australian Football League (AFL); the Dallas Cowboys, Golden State Warriors, Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea FC, and Tokyo Giants; the University of Notre Dame, University of Alabama, and University of Texas; the International Olympic Committee (IOC), England Rugby, and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).

Our Leadership Principles