Vice President, Software Engineering

SIDEARM Sports•Dallas, TX

About The Position

SIDEARM is rebuilding its college athletics digital platform from the ground up. The Vice President of Software Engineering leads more than 35 engineers across web, mobile, API, and platform disciplines, owning the quality, speed, and reliability of software delivery. The role reports to Learfield’s Chief Data and Technology Officer and serves on the SIDEARM leadership team. This leader will establish an AI-first approach to the product development lifecycle, guide a full platform re-architecture onto a modern CMS and cloud-native foundation, and develop the practices and talent of a world-class software organization. The role is accountable for performance and reliability during sharp, high-volume live-event traffic peaks, and partners with product leaders early to shape feasible, cost-effective roadmaps. It also leads development of content, video, and personalization systems that support athletics departments and improve fan engagement. Ownership includes target architecture and migration strategy; service boundaries, APIs, data flow, multi-tenancy, and cost control; instrumentation, SLOs, error budgets, and performance testing; quality systems and incident response; mobile and web release delivery; AI and data applications; and security, privacy, accessibility, and tested disaster recovery.

Requirements

12+ years of experience in software engineering.
At least 6 years leading engineers, including experience leading managers and senior managers.
Practical understanding of how agentic AI can accelerate engineering delivery and how data pipelines and LLMs can create product value and engineering leverage.
Experience rebuilding a product from legacy to modern architecture or scaling a product through an order-of-magnitude increase in traffic; ability to explain sequencing decisions and lessons learned.
Deep cloud architecture judgment covering distributed systems, service decomposition, API design, caching and CDN strategy, data stores, event-driven patterns, multi-tenancy, and cost control.
Experience instrumenting and optimizing performance, and owning SLOs, latency, and capacity planning for systems with sharp, predictable traffic peaks.
Experience shipping and operating both native mobile apps and web products, including app store release management, mobile performance, crash rates, and shared platforms.
Working command of technologies such as React, Node.js, TypeScript, Java, or comparable technologies, and the API and data layers behind them.
Track record of measurably improving software quality, including defect rates, incident frequency, test automation, or MTTR.
Experience partnering with product leaders early in design to shape feasibility, cost, and sequencing before specifications are written.
Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain strong engineers in a competitive market.

Nice To Haves

Experience in sports, media, live events, or entertainment technology, especially where traffic arrives in waves and content is time-sensitive.
Experience with live video streaming, real-time data, or content management at scale.
Experience with multi-tenant SaaS serving hundreds or thousands of customer brands from a shared platform.

Responsibilities

Lead a team of more than 35 engineers across web, mobile, API, and platform disciplines.
Set engineering standards and delivery expectations, and develop engineering leaders and teams.
Establish agentic AI practices, governance, and outcomes across the product development lifecycle.
Lead the complete re-architecture of SIDEARM products onto a modern CMS and cloud-native foundation.
Define target architecture and migration strategy, including service boundaries, API contracts, data flows, multi-tenancy, cost per transaction, and build-versus-buy decisions.
Build and operate instrumentation, SLOs, error budgets, performance and capacity models, and load and chaos testing for peak traffic events.
Improve software quality through automated testing, release gates, defect tracking, production incident processes, and measurable quality outcomes.
Manage native mobile app releases through app stores and web release cadence, with a shared platform supporting both.
Partner with product leaders from early design to shape feasibility, cost, and roadmap sequencing.
Build streaming, content, personalization, and partner tooling systems that help athletics departments publish, stream, and understand their fans.
Identify where machine learning and generative AI improve fan experience, content operations, partner tooling, and engineering workflows.
Establish secure development practices and address privacy, accessibility, and disaster recovery requirements.
Hire, develop, and retain strong engineers and create career paths that attract and retain senior talent.