Staff Platform Engineer, Fanatics Markets

Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform, and they are seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to set technical direction and design durable platform abstractions. This role involves leading complex initiatives, establishing platform standards, and mentoring engineers while actively contributing to core platform capabilities.

Responsibilities:

• Define and document enterprise-wide standards for AI integration, establishing prompt engineering patterns and validation frameworks that scale development velocity without compromising architectural integrity
• Orchestrate the identification of AI-generated code pitfalls—such as security vulnerabilities and over-abstraction—while quantifying the business impact through PR velocity and quality metrics
• Lead the design and evolution of highly available, scalable infrastructure, ensuring the platform remains resilient under the demands of multi-disciplinary engineering teams
• Architect robust CI/CD ecosystems and developer tooling, focusing on eliminating friction in the software delivery lifecycle and driving organization-wide productivity
• Serve as a subject matter expert for platform security, implementing sophisticated safeguards and compliance standards to protect the integrity of the firm’s systems
• Drive the strategic roadmap for system observability, implementing advanced monitoring, tracing, and alerting architectures to ensure peak operational reliability
• Act as a primary technical liaison between engineering, product, and quantitative teams to translate complex requirements into scalable, innovative platform solutions
• Foster a culture of high performance and continuous learning, mentoring engineers on best practices, managing incident response strategies, and advocating for the adoption of transformative technologies

Requirements:

• 8 plus years of experience in platform engineering or DevOps, with a proven track record of architecting scalable, high-availability cloud-native environments (AWS/Kubernetes)
• Expert proficiency in using AI collaborators (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) to ship production code, with a documented ability to optimize personal and team development workflows
• Demonstrated capability to articulate the pros/cons of various AI tools and implement rigorous validation strategies to identify pitfalls like over-abstraction or security gaps
• Deep technical mastery of IaC frameworks such as Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation to automate complex infrastructure lifecycles
• Strong programming proficiency in Java and Python (Golang preferred) with a full-stack background to bridge the gap between infrastructure and application logic
• Extensive experience building mature CI/CD pipelines and implementing advanced observability, chaos testing, and incident management frameworks
• Self-directed leader who thrives in ambiguous environments, balancing high-quality architectural standards with data-driven productivity metrics
• Exceptional communication and partnership skills, with a proven ability to influence engineering, product, and quant teams across international borders
• Team-first mentality focused on driving operational excellence, mentoring others, and proactively adopting emerging technologies to maintain a competitive edge
• Previous experience in high-growth startup environments
• Contributions to open-source projects or technical community
• Experience with real-money transaction systems and regulatory compliance
• Background in building developer tools or improving engineering productivity
• Experience leading without authority and influencing technical direction across teams