Engineering Manager, Search & Recommendations + Design System

Fanatics • San Mateo, CA

11h • $216,000 - $235,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Fanatics is seeking a highly technical Engineering Manager to lead two critical platform teams responsible for Search, Recommendations, and the Frontend Design System across Fanatics’ global e-commerce ecosystem. These platforms power product discovery and frontend consistency across 1,000+ sports and fan merchandise websites, serving millions of users worldwide.
This role is ideal for a hands-on technical leader who thrives in fast-paced environments, actively contributes to architecture and system design, and leads teams to deliver scalable, reliable, and accessible platform capabilities.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years managing engineering teams in high-scale consumer, marketplace, or platform environments.
• Experience leading engineering teams in fast-paced environments with strong execution discipline and agile delivery practices.
• Strong technical background in search and relevance systems, personalization platforms, backend services, or modern frontend architecture at scale.
• Deep expertise in React, TypeScript, and modern frontend architecture, including state management and frontend performance optimization.
• Experience building, scaling, or governing reusable component libraries or centralized design systems used across multiple product surfaces.
• Experience delivering scalable, production-grade systems used by large numbers of users, with strict latency, availability, and reliability standards.
• Experience contributing meaningfully to architecture and technical design reviews, with the ability to assess trade-offs and guide technical direction.
• Experience operating experimentation platforms and A/B testing frameworks in production environments.
• Strong execution, organizational, and cross-functional leadership skills with the ability to drive roadmap planning and communicate risks and outcomes clearly.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with modern search platforms such as Google Vertex AI Search, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or similar search databases.
• Experience working with recommendation or personalization systems, including ML-driven ranking, relevance tuning, or third-party personalization platforms.
• Backend services development experience in Go (Golang) or similar high-performance backend languages.
• Experience improving engineering productivity through AI-assisted or agentic development workflows.
• Familiarity with modern AI-powered development tools, code generation, and automation frameworks.
• Experience integrating AI capabilities into platform systems or engineering workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own and drive the technical and execution strategy across Search, Recommendations, and the Frontend Design System.
• Lead platform development focused on search relevance, personalization, browse optimization, and scalable frontend architecture.
• Drive quarterly roadmap planning and ensure predictable, high-quality delivery across multiple engineering pods.
• Contribute to architecture and technical design reviews, ensuring systems are scalable, resilient, and aligned with long-term platform evolution.
• Partner with Product and Data teams to integrate ML-driven ranking and personalization capabilities into discovery systems.
• Establish and maintain strict performance, latency, availability, and reliability standards across platform services.
• Drive a high-velocity experimentation culture, leveraging A/B testing and data-informed iteration to improve engagement and conversion.
• Own the evolution and adoption of reusable React and TypeScript component libraries that ensure frontend consistency and accessibility.
• Set standards for frontend architecture, component governance, and client-side performance optimization.
• Provide structure, clarity, and operational rigor in planning, execution, and stakeholder communication.
• Identify risks early, communicate trade-offs effectively, and ensure leadership has clear visibility into progress and outcomes.
• Mentor and grow engineers and technical leads, fostering accountability, ownership, and engineering excellence across teams.

Benefits

• We provide a wide range of health, financial, legal, and development assistance, including wellness programs with fitness and weight management partners, paid maternity paternity leave, and infertility treatment.
• Additionally, we offer flexible time off to help you recharge, along with a competitive 401k plan to support your financial future.
• At Fanatics, we’re dedicated to supporting you in all aspects of work and life.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed