Engineering Manager, Unified Data Service

PlayOn • Alpharetta, GA

10d • Hybrid

About The Position

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.

Requirements

• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Benefits

• Multiple medical insurance plans to choose from
• Dental, vision life and disability insurance
• Employee Emergency Fund
• Company equity (stock options)
• Open PTO policy
• 401K plan with company match
• Hybrid/flexible work environment

What This Job Offers

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