Engineering Lead, Creator and Seller Operations (Fanatics Live)

About Us

About the Team

Fanatics Collectibles is a new company operating at the intersection of collectibles, culture, and technology. Backed by world-class investors, operators, and sports & entertainment partners, we are building the global leader in next-generation collectibles. As part of the broader Fanatics ecosystem, we leverage a digital sports platform that spans over 900 sports properties and engages more than 81 million fans. Together, we are reimagining every part of the collectibles experience for fans, partners, and creators.

About the Team

Fanatics Live is transforming the digital shopping and collector experience through livestream commerce, creator-led content, and interactive fan engagement. The platform enables collectors to discover, purchase, and engage around collectibles in real time through immersive live experiences.

Every show on Live depends on the people who run it. Breakers, sellers, and a new wave of creators (sports stars, commentators, and brands with engaged audiences) choose where to stream based on how easy we make it to run their business. Our goal is to make Live the lowest-lift way to run a collecting business or build an audience, and the platform sellers choose to stream on first.

That means sellers and creators should:

• Ship orders with almost no effort
• Get paid on time, with full clarity on what they earned
• Know their audience and what drives their sales
• Get started quickly, even without a full breaking operation

About the Role

We are seeking an Engineering Lead to build and lead a new team within Fanatics Live Breaking, with full ownership of the creator and seller experience.

This is a chance to shape a team from the ground up. You will work closely with the Live teams, because every great show starts with a seller who wants to stream here. You will partner with the Live Breaking engineering leader to design the processes and rituals that fit your team and move the business forward.

You will own the roadmap with Product and Design, and stay close to the people you build for: sellers, creators, and the account managers who support them. We are looking for a leader who understands the product and our ambitions, sets the team up to win, and jumps into the code when the moment calls for it.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of backend and web engineers, including hiring and onboarding as the team scales
• Own the roadmap with Product and Design for the seller and creator experience, deliver it predictably, and adjust plans as priorities and risks change
• Turn goals into shipped work: easier shipping, clear payouts, insight into audience and sales, and faster onboarding for new creators and sellers
• Work directly with account managers, sellers, and creators to find where they lose time, and replace manual workflows with tools they can use on their own
• Work with the rest of Live so the team's processes fit how Live builds and ships, and set clear ownership boundaries with other teams
• Guide technical decisions across in-house systems and third-party integrations such as shipping and payment providers, with clear tradeoffs and risks
• Hold a high bar for reliability on seller-facing flows, and respond fast when sellers are blocked
• Stay engaged in architecture and design reviews, partner with senior and staff engineers to keep the seller platform in step with the rest of Fanatics, and empower engineers to own implementation details
• Drive effective use of AI-assisted engineering tools across development, testing, and code review
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement

What Success Looks Like

• Sellers and creators choose Live first because it is the easiest place to run their business
• A team with clear ownership that ships predictably, in step with Live
• Strong partnerships with Product, Design, account managers, and the engineering teams
• Engineers who feel supported, challenged, and clear on their growth path

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a backend or full stack background
• 2+ years leading engineers, as an engineering manager or a team lead
• Proven record of leading a team that ships production systems on a predictable cadence
• Strong technical judgment on distributed systems, APIs, and data models, with the ability to evaluate designs and tradeoffs
• Experience partnering with Product and business stakeholders to define priorities and deliver outcomes
• Clear communication with engineers, business partners, and external users
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as an engineering manager, including hiring and growing a team
• Experience building seller, merchant, or creator platforms on a marketplace or e-commerce product
• Experience with orders, shipping, payments, or payout systems
• Experience standing up a new team
• Familiarity with Elixir, GraphQL, React, or real-time technologies
• Experience implementing or scaling AI-assisted engineering workflows
• Passion for sports, collectibles, creators, or digital communities

Code-Writing Contribution

This role is hands-on. The Engineering Lead takes part in architecture and design reviews, reviews code, debugs production issues with the team, and writes production code when the team needs it. Their main focus is the product, the team, and setting both up for success.

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