Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Prediction-market and sportsbook products operate like high-availability SaaS: always-on transactions, real-time pricing signals, and strict reliability expectations. This Senior Engineering Manager role sits at that intersection, with clear emphasis on distributed, event-driven backends and a multiplatform client strategy (Kotlin Multiplatform) that reflects how modern SaaS teams reduce fragmentation across ecosystems.
From a SaaS career perspective, the position builds durable leadership experience around operating platforms, not just shipping features. Ownership of availability, performance, delivery cadence, and quality mirrors the metrics-driven reality of subscription software, while exposure to Kubernetes/Terraform-style delivery systems and Kafka-centric architectures translates directly to other scale-oriented SaaS domains. The remit to partner with product and business stakeholders also reinforces the cross-functional alignment that becomes increasingly important at senior levels.
This role tends to suit engineering leaders who enjoy balancing org design with technical direction—especially those comfortable guiding managers, setting measurable outcomes, and making trade-offs between near-term delivery and platform evolution. It will resonate with professionals who prefer hands-on architectural stewardship alongside people leadership in a regulated, operationally demanding SaaS environment.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About Fanatics Markets
Fanatics Markets is the real-money prediction and trading app where you can invest in moments you care about. Built on a secure platform, we let users predict real-world outcomes and trade on events they actually follow - from sports and entertainment to political elections and beyond. Our mission is to redefine how fans engage with the moments and markets that matter most. We're looking for the right people to help us build the future of prediction markets.
Role Overview
As a Senior Engineering Manager at Fanatics Markets, you’ll be responsible for powering the rapidly growing Fanatics sportsbook app. We embrace principles of data-driven development, operational excellence, and continuous process optimization to deliver a stable, scalable platform. Central to our strategy is Kotlin Multiplatform, which empowers us to deliver high-quality features quickly and consistently across multiple ecosystems. By focusing on object-oriented design, modern coding practices, open-source frameworks, and third-party platform integrations, we continuously innovate and deliver at speed in this exciting and fast-moving market.
We are seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead and inspire teams building distributed systems that power our core platforms. You will be responsible for growing high-performing engineering teams, shaping technical direction, and ensuring delivery of resilient and scalable services built on Kotlin, Java, Spring Boot, Postgres, Kafka, Redis, and Kubernetes. In this role, you will balance people leadership, organizational strategy, and technical oversight, enabling teams to deliver with excellence and speed.
Responsibilities
- Lead, coach, and develop engineering managers and senior engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Partner with product and business stakeholders to align technical investments with company strategy, balancing long-term platform evolution with near-term priorities.
- Guide teams in building distributed, event-driven, and fault-tolerant systems leveraging Kafka, Redis/Redis PubSub, and Postgres.
- Provide architectural oversight and ensure best practices are applied when building services in Kotlin/Java with Spring Boot.
- Drive organizational excellence in deployment, scalability, and operations through Kubernetes, Helm, and Terraform.
- Set and measure engineering goals (availability, performance, delivery cadence, quality) and hold teams accountable to outcomes.
- Champion diversity, inclusion, and growth, ensuring that engineers thrive in a supportive and challenging environment.
- Recruit, retain, and scale top engineering talent to meet the demands of growing systems and business needs.
- Advocate for engineering across the organization, influencing leadership on technology strategy and distributed systems investment.
Qualifications
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years managing engineering teams (managing managers a plus).
- Proven success leading teams building and operating distributed systems at scale.
- Strong track record of building engineering organizations that deliver business-critical systems with reliability and speed.
- Familiarity with modern backend stacks, particularly Kotlin/Java, Spring Boot, Postgres, Kafka, Redis, and Kubernetes.
- Experience creating clarity and alignment in complex technical and organizational contexts.
- Excellent communication and leadership skills, with the ability to influence both technical and executive stakeholders.
- Passion for building teams and cultures that deliver impactful results.
- Experience leading multi-team programs or platform transformations.
- Background in scaling organizations through high-growth phases.
- Able to deal with ambiguity and strong self-motivation.
The expected salary range for this role is based on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This role is eligible for the Fanatics Betting and Gaming annual bonus program and an equity award. *Salary range is listed in USD; actual salary will vary based on location. *Salary Range: $163,400-$322,500 per year (actual salary will be determined in part by a successful candidate’s geographic location). In addition to base salary, bonus, and equity, full-time employees are eligible for Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K, paid time off, and other benefits like GymPass, Pet Insurance, Family Care Benefits, and more. We’ll also give you $700 to set up your home office!
