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. The role involves leading cross-team initiatives, establishing platform standards, and mentoring engineers while being directly involved in 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