Fanatics Commerce are hiring a Senior Director, Software Engineering, Storefront

Fanatics Commerce is the global leader in licensed sports merchandise, operating a vertically integrated platform that designs, manufactures, and delivers officially licensed apparel, jerseys, headwear, and collectibles for major leagues, teams, and events worldwide. With more than 900 e-commerce sites and a global omnichannel presence across digital, in-venue, and retail, Fanatics Commerce reaches fans in over 180 countries and powers official fan experiences for many of the world's most iconic sports properties.

At Fanatics, we bring our BOLD Leadership Principles to life every day—building championship teams, obsessing over fans, acting with limitless entrepreneurial spirit, and delivering with a determined and relentless mindset.

As we continue to scale our global platform, the Senior Director, Storefront Engineering will play a critical role in architecting and scaling the customer-facing storefront experience across more than a thousand Fanatics Commerce websites.

ROLE OVERVIEW

The Senior Director, Storefront Engineering owns the end-to-end Storefront pillar — from Home Page, Top Navigation, and Branding through the full path-to-PDP discovery surface (Search, SRP, TLP, DLP, navigation, filtering), the Product Description Page, Direct-to-Item, Made-to-Order digital apparel customization, Pricing & Promo display, and the Aspire Design System — powering the fan experience across marquee partner brands including Fanatics, NFL Shop, MLB Shop, NBA Store, LIDS, Chelsea FC, and Fanatics International. This leader will define and execute a multi-year technical strategy for the Storefront domain, driving platform modernization, AI/ML-powered personalization, and conversion performance across more than 5 million SKUs in over 180 countries. The Senior Director, Storefront Engineering delivers business and fan impact through BOLD leadership and execution excellence, leveraging data, automation, and AI-enabled insights.

HOW WILL YOU DRIVE IMPACT

Success is measured by the ability to deliver results through BOLD capabilities and measurable outcomes.

Team & Leadership Impact (Build Championship Teams)

Cross-Functional Leadership:

• Partner across Cart-to-Care (Cart, Checkout, Payments, Order Management), Lifecycle (PIM, CRM, Marketing), Foundations (Platforms, Data, Reliability), and Mobile to shape Fanatics Commerce's overall commerce technology direction and ensure seamless end-to-end fan experiences.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Data Science to define and execute a high-velocity experimentation roadmap using A/B testing frameworks (Spark/Lumen) and analytics platforms (Amplitude, GA4) to optimize Conversion Rate, AOV, and other key business metrics.
• Operate as a key technical voice within the broader engineering leadership team, influencing platform-level decisions and advocating for Storefront's strategic priorities at the executive level.

People Leadership:

• Build, mentor, grow, and empower a high-performing, globally distributed engineering organization spanning San Mateo, Boulder, Hyderabad, and nearshore contractors, with direct responsibility for scaling leadership benches across all geographies.
• Develop and grow engineering managers and technical leads, fostering a culture of accountability, code quality, performance ownership, and end-to-end customer experience responsibility.
• Drive hiring strategies across international and remote locations, with particular emphasis on building leadership depth in India and other global engineering hubs.

Fan & Customer Impact (Obsessed with Fans)

• Own the full customer-facing storefront experience for millions of fans across more than a thousand websites and over 5 million SKUs, ensuring every surface — from Home Page to PDP — delivers a fast, relevant, and conversion-optimized experience.
• Champion Search Relevancy, Merchandising, and Personalization engines that power discovery across the storefront, enabling fans to find the right product at the right moment across partner brands including NFL Shop, MLB Shop, NBA Store, LIDS, Chelsea FC, and Fanatics International.
• Drive adoption and evolution of the Aspire Design System across all brands and surfaces, delivering a consistent, modern, and accessible experience (WCAG/ADA compliant) while accelerating engineering velocity through shared, reusable components.
• Ensure storefront pages are technically optimized for SEO, page speed, and structured data while supporting multi-brand, multi-region (NA, UK, EU, FI), and multi-language requirements including GDPR-compliant consent and tracking.

Innovation & Problem Solving (Limitless Entrepreneurial Spirit)

• Champion the integration of Generative AI and Machine Learning capabilities — including OpenAI, Google Vertex AI, Gemini, internal recommendation systems, and vector databases — to power personalized discovery, intelligent search, conversational commerce, dynamic merchandising, and conversion-optimized PDPs.
• Lead the modernization of the core storefront platform (Iris) toward a Micro-Frontend and Microservices ecosystem purpose-built for high-scale, global e-commerce traffic, balancing velocity, quality, and long-term platform health.
• Build an engineering culture of high-velocity, high-quality experimentation, using data and analytics to define, measure, and continuously improve key storefront metrics including Search-to-Detail Rate, PDP Engagement, Add-to-Cart Rate, and Core Web Vitals.
• Drive the multi-year technical roadmap for the Storefront domain, setting a technical vision that anticipates scale demands and positions Fanatics Commerce at the forefront of modern e-commerce frontend architecture.

Ownership & Execution (Determined & Relentless Mindset)

• Be accountable for the performance, quality, accessibility, and user experience of the storefront across Web, iOS, and Android, relentlessly optimizing for speed and Core Web Vitals at consumer scale.
• Own Storefront 24×7 on-call posture, incident response, and peak-event readiness for marquee commercial moments including Super Bowl, NFL Kickoff, March Madness, and major product drops, partnering with SRE/SRO on platform resiliency.
• Drive shift-left quality practices and a mature SDLC, establishing a culture in which engineers are personally accountable for code quality, performance, reliability, and the end-to-end customer experience.
• Translate complex technical strategy into clear business outcomes for C-level audiences, maintaining strong executive presence and stakeholder alignment across the organization.

AI & DIGITAL CAPABILITY

We are building a future-ready organization. This role is expected to:

• Apply AI and technology to improve efficiency, quality, and outcomes
• Use data and digital tools to inform decisions and enhance performance
• Demonstrate curiosity and adaptability in adopting new technologies and ways of working
• Contribute to a culture of innovation and continuous improvement

CAPABILITIES & EXPERIENCE YOU BRING

Required Qualifications:

• 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering and engineering leadership, with at least 7 years dedicated to e-commerce or high-scale consumer applications and significant time leading managers across globally distributed organizations.
• Extensive architectural leadership in modern frontend technologies including React, TypeScript, Node.js, ES6, modern CSS/tooling, and SSR, with demonstrated experience architecting Micro-Frontend systems and design systems at scale.
• Deep understanding of REST APIs, GraphQL, and service orchestration patterns, with experience designing and operating highly distributed Microservices architectures at consumer scale.
• Proven experience building, deploying, and optimizing iOS and Android native or hybrid applications as part of an omni-platform storefront strategy.
• High proficiency with product analytics platforms (Amplitude, GA4, Google Analytics) and strong ability to use SQL for independent data investigation, reporting, and decision-making, with experience leveraging A/B testing frameworks to drive conversion and engagement outcomes.
• Experience owning production reliability for consumer-facing properties including incident management, on-call programs, observability tooling (Splunk, Datadog, or comparable), and peak-event readiness for major commercial moments.
• Experience leading initiatives involving AI/ML, Vector Databases, Recommendation Engines, semantic/vector search, and modern personalization platforms, with direct experience using Google Vertex AI, OpenAI, or comparable platforms strongly preferred.

Education:

Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field strongly preferred.

Hybrid: The primary place of performance of this role is the Company's office located in San Mateo, CA, subject to the Company's current hybrid work policy. This role currently requires in-office presence 3 days per week.