Senior Staff Data Engineer

The Role

As a Senior Staff Data Platform Engineer in the Fanatics Ecosystem organization, you will provide technical leadership for the design, evolution, and execution of our streaming data platform. This role operates with a high degree of autonomy, owning architectural direction for foundational streaming systems that span teams, products, and operating companies.

You will work closely with engineering leadership, platform teams, and product partners to ensure streaming systems are scalable, reliable, and aligned with long-term organizational goals, collaborating across event-driven architectures, schema management, stream processing, and modern data platform tooling. This role emphasizes building durable, reusable streaming capabilities—aggregation and enrichment services, schema management and event mesh capabilities, and shared data contracts—rather than one-off pipelines or analytics solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, discovery, design, and implementation of complex streaming systems across multiple domains.
• Own and evolve the streaming data platform as a long-lived, reusable capability serving teams across the organization.
• Drive strategic technical decisions around architecture, technology selection, and system design with a focus on reliability, cost, and operational sustainability.
• Define and evolve shared data models, schemas, and contracts for streaming data that enable consistent use across teams while respecting local autonomy.
• Partner with product, platform, and engineering leaders to translate ambiguous business needs into clear technical direction and executable plans.
• Establish standards and patterns for building, enriching, and consuming data streams.
• Produce clear technical proposals and documentation that communicate system design, trade-offs, and long-term implications.
• Represent the team in cross-functional planning, architecture reviews, and strategic initiatives.
• Serve as an escalation point for complex technical challenges and high-impact incidents.
• Mentor engineers at all levels and set expectations for technical excellence, design quality, and documentation.

Technical Environment

You'll work across a mix of technologies and systems, including:

• Event-driven and streaming data systems (Kafka, Kafka Connect)
• Stream processing frameworks (e.g., Kafka Streams, Flink)
• Schema management and data contracts
• Observability and monitoring for streaming systems
• Long-lived backend services supporting streaming workflows
• Infrastructure as code (Terraform)

Qualifications

• 12 + years of experience in data engineering or platform engineering, with demonstrated progression into senior or staff-level technical leadership roles.
• Proven experience architecting and operating large-scale streaming platforms.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems concepts, including state, ordering, failure modes, and consistency.
• Expert-level knowledge of Kafka, including architecture, operations, and the broader ecosystem.
• Track record of influencing technical direction across multiple teams or organizations.
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-paced environments and drive clarity through technical leadership.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience presenting complex technical topics to diverse audiences.
• Experience with data governance, security, and compliance considerations at scale.
• Experience with infrastructure as code tools; Terraform experience is a plus.
• Experience developing in Go is a strong plus.

If you possess some of these skills but not all of them, we still encourage you to apply!The salary range for this position is $204,250 to $268,750, which 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. Remote employee may also be eligible for a home office setup stipend.