Fanatics · 3 months ago
Director, Customer Intelligence (Data Science & Machine Learning)
95 Morton St, New York, NY, 10014, US
Full-time
Onsite
Director/Executive
$271K/yr - $357K/yr
10+ years expFanatics is a leading company in the sports betting and gaming industry, and they are seeking a Director of Customer Intelligence to lead their Data Science and Machine Learning team. The role involves defining the multi-year strategy for applied science, delivering production ML solutions, and fostering a culture of excellence and collaboration within the team.
eSportsManufacturingRetailSporting GoodsSports
Responsibilities
Own strategy & portfolio. Define multiyear DS/ML strategy and prioritize a cross-team roadmap supporting a range of projects across personalization, marketing, and trading/risk. Communicate clear goals and success metrics to executives and partners
Lead and set standards. Build and scale a high-performing small-but-mighty team of cross-functional experts. Establish succession plans, standards of excellence, and a feedback-rich, inclusive culture; set the bar for hiring, performance, and career development
Deliver production ML. Ship reliable real-time and batch models (feature stores, offline/online training, CI/CD for ML, model registry, canary/shadow deploys, rollback). Establish model governance, documentation, and observability (data drift, bias/fairness, performance SLOs)
Operational excellence. Stand up on-call practices, incident response, post-mortems, and SLOs for data and model services. Drive cost efficiency (rightsizing compute, caching, autoscaling) while protecting customer experience
Experimentation & causal inference. Scale an experimentation program (A/B, multi-armed bandits, CUPED/causal methods) with clear guardrails, review, and instrumentation to attribute impact through causal inference techniques
Blend scientific and technical vision. Set credible and inspiring long-term research and scientific direction for data scientists, while maintaining the connection 'from research lab to factory floor' between science and engineering
Stakeholder leadership. Align with Product, Risk/Trading, Marketing, and Compliance; present strategy, risks, and results to execs in clear narratives and dashboards
Qualification
Required
10+ years in Data Science/Applied ML (or equivalent) with 5+ years leading senior ICs and/or managers; proven delivery of ML products at scale
Expertise across predictive modeling, ranking/recommendation, and/or time-series/forecasting
Excellence in written and verbal communication; capable of driving cross-org decisions with clear narratives and data
Experience launching/kickstarting 0-to-1 solutions, esp. dealing with high ambiguity and being a proactive change agent in face of decision deadlocks or unclear next-steps
Strong product sense and business judgment
Preferred
Experience in regulated industries (fintech/gaming) and real-time decisioning at scale
Hands-on depth with Python, SQL/PySpark, ML frameworks (scikit-learn/XGBoost/TensorFlow/PyTorch), and MLOps (feature stores, MLflow/model registry, CI/CD, online serving)
Experience deploying econometric and/or causal inference techniques at scale through software and systems (going beyond just analytics and reporting)
Experience building a high-performing blended cross-functional team of scientists and engineers, working together as one team with shared goals and incentives
Cloud platform expertise (AWS preferred), containers/Kubernetes, and infrastructure-as-code
Advanced degree in CS/EE/Stats/Math/Econ (or equivalent applied experience)
Benefits
Medical
Dental
Vision
401K
Paid time off
GymPass
Pet Insurance
Family Care Benefits
$700 to set up your home office
Company
Fanatics
Fanatics is a sports merchandise retailer that manufactures fan gear and jerseys across retail channels. It is a sub-organization of Kynetic.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Fanatics has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2021 (2)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$4.9BKey Investors
Clearlake Capital GroupNational Football LeagueAlameda Research
2022-12-06Private Equity· $700M
2022-03-02Private Equity· $1.5B
2022-01-01Series Unknown· $10M
Leadership Team
J
Joseph Bozich
Advisor to Chief Executive Officer
Michael Mahan
CEO
Recent News
Sports Business Journal
2026-02-03
2026-02-02
Company data provided by crunchbase