Manager – Data Engineering & Operations

THE TEAM YOU WILL BE JOININGA fast-growing, privately owned sports and live entertainment organization in Charlotte that runs pro teams, major venues and a year-round calendar of events

You’ll sit in the business strategy and analytics group, the commercial side of the house, which drives revenue across ticketing, partnerships, food and beverage, and retail

You’ll report to the Director of Business Analytics, and work alongside the CRM and marketing analytics and ticket and revenue analytics functions

The team is moving away from relying on third-party data services and building its own internal data platform

Why now: this is a critical seat, and the organization is investing in data engineering, automation and AI as a core capability

There’s a plan to add 1-2 people under this role as the function growsWHAT THEY OFFER YOUFull ownership of the enterprise data foundation, as the go-to owner for integrations, infrastructure and automationA real hand in shaping the platform from the ground up, not just maintaining something someone else builtA clear path to lead a team as the function scales

Exposure to 1:1 marketing, predictive analytics, recommendation engines and AI-enabled fan engagement

High visibility with Marketing, Ticketing, Partnerships, Technology, Finance and league-level data partners

Work that connects directly to the fan experience and to big initiatives like venue renovation and new fan technology

Competitive compensation and bonus eligibilityLOCATIONCharlotte, NC, onsite, with work at stadium events on some nights, weekends and holidays WHY THIS ROLE IS IMPORTANT Owns every data integration across CRM, ticketing, marketing automation, mobile app, web, loyalty and partnership systems

Designs and builds scalable batch and real-time pipelines, along with the enterprise data lake and a unified fan data environment

Leads identity resolution and master data management, so every fan touchpoint connects to a single view Powers automated 1:1 marketing journeys, including campaign triggers, lead scoring, renewal intent models and lifecycle orchestration

Builds secure API connections between enterprise data and approved AI platforms, and routes AI insights back into CRM, ticketing and marketing systems

Sets and enforces data governance, quality, privacy and consent standards, and serves as the internal expert on data reliability

Turns business needs into practical solutions, from automating sales appointment routing to supporting next-best-action engines

Represents the organization in league-level working groups on data standards and integrationsTHE BACKGROUND THAT FITS7-10 years in data engineering or analytics engineering, ideally at a senior or lead levelA track record of building and owning enterprise cloud data platforms (Snowflake, Azure, AWS or similar)
Strong SQL and Python, plus production ETL/ELT pipeline development and data modeling

Experience integrating CRM (Salesforce a plus), marketing automation and digital platforms through APIsHands-on experience putting data governance and quality frameworks in placeA plus: sports, entertainment, media or other consumer-facing industries (not required)
A plus: CDPs, identity resolution, real-time streaming and operationalizing ML models

You have the confidence and foresight to move an organization off third-party tools and onto its own platform, and you’re happy to get hands-on with ingestion when something breaks

Reference: 70829