Vice President, Software Engineering

LEARFIELD•Dallas, TX

About The Position

SIDEARM is rebuilding its digital platform for college athletics from the ground up. The Vice President of Software Engineering will lead 35+ engineers and own engineering across web, mobile, API, and platform, with accountability for 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 set engineering direction, develop the team, and deliver a modern platform for college sports fans. The work includes adopting agentic AI across the product development lifecycle, re-architecting products onto a modern CMS and cloud-native foundation, and building the practices, delivery systems, and operational rigor of a world-class software organization. The role owns performance and reliability during sharp traffic peaks, partners with product leaders from early design, and advances streaming, content, and personalization capabilities. Ownership areas include target architecture and migration, service boundaries, APIs, data flow, multi-tenancy, and cost control; performance instrumentation, SLOs, error budgets, load and chaos testing; quality systems and incident response; mobile and web delivery; AI and data applications; and security, privacy, accessibility, and disaster recovery.

Requirements

12+ years of experience in software engineering, including 6+ years leading engineers.
Experience leading other leaders, including 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 modernizing a legacy product or scaling a product through an order-of-magnitude increase in traffic, with the ability to explain sequencing decisions and lessons learned.
Cloud architecture expertise in distributed systems, including service decomposition, API design, caching and CDN strategy, data stores, event-driven patterns, multi-tenancy, and cost control.
Performance engineering experience, including instrumentation, SLO ownership, 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 releases, 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.
A record of measurably improving software quality, such as 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, particularly 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 on a shared platform.

Responsibilities

Lead engineering across web, mobile, API, and platform, managing a team of 35+ engineers.
Adopt agentic AI in the product development lifecycle and establish appropriate agents, governance, and outcomes.
Lead the re-architecture of SIDEARM products onto a modern CMS and cloud-native foundation, including a routine delivery pipeline.
Establish engineering standards, code review and testing discipline, on-call and incident practices, quality measures, and career paths.
Own instrumentation, performance, capacity planning, and resilience for major college athletics traffic peaks.
Partner with product leaders from the earliest design stages to shape feasibility, costs, and delivery sequencing.
Build streaming, content, and personalization systems that improve publishing, streaming, and fan engagement.
Set target architecture and migration plans, including service boundaries, API contracts, data flow, multi-tenancy, transaction costs, and build-versus-buy decisions.
Own performance practices including SLOs, error budgets, Core Web Vitals, app startup times, load and chaos testing, and measurement of changes.
Improve quality through automated testing, release gates, defect tracking, and production incident processes.
Lead mobile app releases through app stores, web delivery cadence, and a shared platform for web and mobile features.
Identify effective applications of machine learning and generative AI in fan experiences, content operations, partner tools, and engineering workflows.
Oversee secure development, accessibility obligations, and tested disaster recovery.
Hire, develop, and retain strong engineering talent, including leaders and managers.