Engineering Manager, Unified Data Service

PlayOn Sports is building a unified, real-time operational backbone that connects our brands, products, and fan experiences. As Manager of Unified Data Service, you will lead the platform that ensures events across NFHS Network, GoFan, and MaxPreps are represented once, correctly, and delivered in real time.
In this role, you will lead a team responsible for the ingestion, normalization, deduplication, and distribution of operational events using Kafka and Flink. The Unified Data Service is foundational to fan-facing products, analytics, and AI systems, making this a highly visible and high-impact role.
The ideal candidate brings deep experience in event-driven architectures and distributed systems, paired with strong people leadership. You are comfortable owning systems where correctness, latency, and reliability directly impact the business.
The outcomes you’ll deliver:• A single, trusted real-time event model unifying all PlayOn brands.• Highly reliable Kafka streams powering operational, analytical, and AI workloads.• Robust Flink-based deduplication and stateful processing ensuring data correctness. In this role, you can expect to

• Lead engineers building and operating the Unified Data Service.
• Own Kafka topic design, schema evolution, and event contracts.
• Oversee Flink streaming jobs for deduplication and enrichment.
• Define standards for event identity, idempotency, and correlation.
• Partner with product teams to onboard producers and consumers safely.
• Ensure high availability, low latency, and operational excellence.
• Manage cost, scalability, and performance of the streaming platform.

To thrive in this role, you have

• 6+ years in backend, data platform, or streaming systems engineering.
• 2+ years of people management experience.
• Deep experience with Kafka or equivalent event streaming platforms.
• Hands-on experience with Flink or other stateful stream-processing frameworks.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and event-driven architecture.
• Excellent communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences.

How You Play

• Ownership over Participation– You take responsibility for achieving holistic outcomes, prioritize key objectives, and adapt quickly when situations require a different approach. You follow through even against the toughest challenges.
• Team over Stars – You are a bridge builder, establishing processes and relationships with teams outside your own. You work to rally around common goals, find win-win solutions, compromise when necessary, and help others succeed.
• Growth over Comfort– You are driven by a desire to grow and actively seek opportunities to expand your comfort zone, skills, and confidence. You embrace new challenges with curiosity, accepting discomfort and failure as opportunities to learn.
• Fairness over Popularity – You approach decisions with a scientist’s mindset, challenging your assumptions and remaining objective. You consider long-term impact rather than relying on short-term gains, proactively seek others’ perspectives, and manage emotions in decision-making.