Engineering Manager, Sports Core

📋 Description

• • PENN Entertainment is a leading force in integrated entertainment, sports content, and casino gaming, offering diverse experiences across North America through physical and digital platforms like Hollywood Casino, theScore Bet Sportsbook, and theScore media app. We are driven by a passion for creating and delivering cutting-edge online gaming and sports media products, powered by proprietary in-house technology that forms a crucial part of our omnichannel strategy.
• • As an Engineering Manager for the Sports Core team, you will be instrumental in building and operating the foundational platform that powers live sports and wagering experiences at scale. This is a critical role where you will lead a team of talented and friendly individuals responsible for mission-critical core services and APIs. These services are vital for distributing real-time sports data and event states, directly enabling downstream teams to deliver exceptional fan experiences across our Media and Sports Betting products. Your leadership will ensure these platforms are highly reliable and scalable, meeting the demands of a dynamic industry.
• • Your primary responsibility will be to manage the day-to-day activities of one or more software development teams. This includes setting clear goals, providing consistent mentorship and coaching, offering effective leadership, and conducting performance management with regular feedback. You will foster an environment of trust, accountability, and continuous improvement, prioritizing team outcomes over individual ego and leading with empathy.
• • You will collaborate closely with Product Managers to shape the team's roadmap, meticulously flesh out requirements, and ensure the team's successful execution against these plans. This involves translating product vision into actionable engineering tasks and maintaining alignment between product strategy and development efforts.
• • A key aspect of your role will be ensuring that all development deliverables are thoroughly documented and that key decisions are recorded in accordance with our established design and development processes. This commitment to documentation ensures knowledge sharing, facilitates future development, and maintains a clear audit trail.
• • You will play an active role in hiring initiatives across the engineering department, helping to identify, attract, and onboard top talent. This includes participating in interviews, contributing to the candidate evaluation process, and supporting the onboarding of new team members.
• • You will be tasked with identifying process inefficiencies and proactively contributing to the continual enhancement of our design, development processes, and system architecture. This involves a data-driven approach, leveraging metrics to identify bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement.
• • Ensuring that development adheres to established processes throughout the entire development lifecycle is paramount. You will champion best practices and ensure the team consistently follows the agreed-upon workflows, from initial design to deployment and maintenance.
• • You will establish key success metrics, including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and diligently monitor both team and system performance against these benchmarks. This data-driven approach will inform decision-making and highlight areas needing attention.
• • You will collaborate closely with your team to achieve ambitious performance, scalability, and reliability goals. This requires a deep understanding of distributed systems and a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating potential issues before they impact users.
• • Staying current with industry trends, emerging techniques, and new technologies is essential. You will be expected to incorporate relevant advancements into our practices as deemed necessary, ensuring our platforms remain competitive and innovative.
• • You will be responsible for other duties as required, demonstrating flexibility and a willingness to contribute wherever needed to support the team and the company's objectives.
• • This role requires a leader who is passionate about clean architecture, software craftsmanship, automated testing, CI/CD, and progressive delivery practices. You will champion these principles within your team and across the engineering organization.
• • You will leverage practical experience using AI developer tooling to enhance throughput and quality, implementing sensible guardrails to ensure responsible adoption. Furthermore, you will evaluate and integrate AI capabilities into our products to drive personalization, amplify feature enhancements, and support automation efforts, staying at the forefront of technological innovation.
• • Comfort operating in regulated environments and embedding secure Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) practices is crucial, ensuring compliance and the highest standards of security.
• • A data-driven mindset is essential, utilizing product and engineering metrics to guide experimentation and prioritization, ensuring our efforts are focused on the most impactful initiatives.
• • You will possess a drive for finding simple solutions to complex problems, skillfully balancing speed, quality, and long-term maintainability in your approach.
• • A genuine passion for sports and fan culture is highly desirable, coupled with an understanding of what drives audience engagement and memorable live event moments. This insight will be invaluable in shaping our products and user experiences.