Manager – Data Engineering & Operations

THE TEAM YOU WILL BE JOINING

• A fast-growing, privately owned sports and live entertainment organization in Charlotte that runs pro teams, major venues and a year-round calendar of events
• You’ll sit in the business strategy and analytics group, the commercial side of the house, which drives revenue across ticketing, partnerships, food and beverage, and retail
• You’ll report to the Director of Business Analytics, and work alongside the CRM and marketing analytics and ticket and revenue analytics functions
• The team is moving away from relying on third-party data services and building its own internal data platform
• Why now: this is a critical seat, and the organization is investing in data engineering, automation and AI as a core capability
• There’s a plan to add 1-2 people under this role as the function grows

WHAT THEY OFFER YOU

• Full ownership of the enterprise data foundation, as the go-to owner for integrations, infrastructure and automation
• A real hand in shaping the platform from the ground up, not just maintaining something someone else built
• A clear path to lead a team as the function scales
• Exposure to 1:1 marketing, predictive analytics, recommendation engines and AI-enabled fan engagement
• High visibility with Marketing, Ticketing, Partnerships, Technology, Finance and league-level data partners
• Work that connects directly to the fan experience and to big initiatives like venue renovation and new fan technology
• Competitive compensation and bonus eligibility

LOCATION

• Charlotte, NC, onsite, with work at stadium events on some nights, weekends and holidays

WHY THIS ROLE IS IMPORTANT

• Owns every data integration across CRM, ticketing, marketing automation, mobile app, web, loyalty and partnership systems
• Designs and builds scalable batch and real-time pipelines, along with the enterprise data lake and a unified fan data environment
• Leads identity resolution and master data management, so every fan touchpoint connects to a single view
• Powers automated 1:1 marketing journeys, including campaign triggers, lead scoring, renewal intent models and lifecycle orchestration
• Builds secure API connections between enterprise data and approved AI platforms, and routes AI insights back into CRM, ticketing and marketing systems
• Sets and enforces data governance, quality, privacy and consent standards, and serves as the internal expert on data reliability
• Turns business needs into practical solutions, from automating sales appointment routing to supporting next-best-action engines
• Represents the organization in league-level working groups on data standards and integrations

THE BACKGROUND THAT FITS

• 7-10 years in data engineering or analytics engineering, ideally at a senior or lead level
• A track record of building and owning enterprise cloud data platforms (Snowflake, Azure, AWS or similar)
• Strong SQL and Python, plus production ETL/ELT pipeline development and data modeling
• Experience integrating CRM (Salesforce a plus), marketing automation and digital platforms through APIs
• Hands-on experience putting data governance and quality frameworks in place
• A plus: sports, entertainment, media or other consumer-facing industries (not required)
• A plus: CDPs, identity resolution, real-time streaming and operationalizing ML models
• You have the confidence and foresight to move an organization off third-party tools and onto its own platform, and you’re happy to get hands-on with ingestion when something breaks