Major League Soccer · 5 hours ago
Senior Director, AI Data Architect
New York, NY
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/Executive
$200K/yr - $230K/yr
10+ years expMajor League Soccer is seeking a Senior Director, AI Data Architect to own the technical architecture and evolution of their next-generation data and intelligence platform. This role focuses on building the foundations for knowledge graphs, semantic layers, and context engineering that power AI systems and advanced fan intelligence at scale.
Media and EntertainmentSoccerSports
Responsibilities
Own the end-to-end architecture of MLS’s cloud-native Fan Genome platform, ensuring scalability, reliability, and extensibility for AI-native workloads
Lead the evolution from analytical data models toward semantic and graph-based representations of fan, content, commerce, and engagement domains
Define architectural patterns that support real-time, batch, and hybrid data processing for both human and machine consumption
Design and operate enterprise knowledge graphs modeling fan identity, relationships, behaviors, and interactions
Build and maintain a semantic layer that encodes business meaning, context, and logic for consistent use across systems and AI agents
Define ontologies, taxonomies, and metadata standards that support reasoning, inference, and explainability
Integrate graph systems with Lakehouse storage, APIs, and downstream AI platforms
Lead development of context engineering frameworks enabling AI models and autonomous agents to understand fan state, intent, and history
Enable agentic workflows for data exploration, insight generation, anomaly detection, and feature discovery
Partner with applied AI and ML teams to integrate feature stores, embeddings, vector search, and retrieval-augmented generation pipelines
Establish guardrails for AI-safe data access, grounding, and governance
Own and optimize real-time ingestion and event-driven processing using Apache Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, and Apache Flink
Manage distributed compute with Apache Spark for feature engineering, graph construction, and ML-adjacent workloads
Oversee open table formats such as Apache Hudi and Apache Iceberg to ensure ACID compliance, schema evolution, and incremental processing
Drive performance and cost optimization for low-latency analytical and AI workloads, including federated and zero-copy query patterns
Maintain and evolve data and intelligence APIs supporting batch access and low-latency per-fan queries
Advance identity and entity resolution to support unified fan profiles and graph-based reasoning
Ensure Fan Genome serves as the authoritative source of fan context for personalization, marketing, and AI-driven experiences
Establish enterprise-grade governance with frameworks such as AWS Lake Formation, including lineage, access control, and compliance
Define data and semantic contracts to ensure stability and trust for downstream systems and AI agents
Implement observability, data quality, and cost governance across data, graph, and AI pipelines
Build, mentor, and scale a high-performing team of data and platform engineers
Foster a culture of technical rigor, systems thinking, and experimentation
Act as a technical leader and partner to product, platform, and AI stakeholders across MLS
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field required
10+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or AI-adjacent systems
8+ years of experience leading highly technical teams delivering production-grade platforms
Deep experience designing and operating cloud-native data platforms on AWS, Azure, or GCP
Strong computer science fundamentals with proficiency in Python, Scala, or Java
Expertise in distributed systems, real-time streaming, and large-scale data processing
Proven experience building knowledge graphs, semantic layers, or graph-based data platforms
Experience with graph databases, RDF or property graph models, and graph processing frameworks
Strong understanding of ontologies, metadata modeling, and semantic consistency
Experience designing data platforms optimized for AI and agent consumption
Familiarity with embeddings, vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation, and context pipelines
Experience supporting autonomous or semi-autonomous agents for analytics or intelligence use cases
Expertise with Lakehouse architectures and open table formats such as Apache Hudi or Apache Iceberg
Strong experience with Apache Spark, Apache Flink, Kafka, and real-time pipelines
Proficiency with Infrastructure-as-Code, CI/CD, containers, and observability tooling
Experience implementing fine-grained access control, lineage, and compliance frameworks
Ability to design data and semantic contracts that support stable integrations
Preferred
Advanced degree preferred
Experience with fan or customer 360 platforms and identity resolution systems
Background in personalization, experimentation, or AI-driven engagement platforms
Experience combining graph-based reasoning with vector search or embedding-based systems
Knowledge of soccer or sports media ecosystems
Spanish language proficiency
Willingness to travel and work non-traditional hours when required
Benefits
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
$500 wellness reimbursement
Generous Holiday and PTO schedule
Career and professional development
On-the-job training
Feedback
Ongoing educational opportunities
Company
Major League Soccer
Major League Soccer is a professional sports league that organizes men's soccer competitions in the United States and Canada.
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Major League Soccer 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
2025 (2)
2024 (1)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$25MKey Investors
National Black Bank Foundation
2022-03-10Debt Financing· $25M
2018-06-01Series Unknown
Leadership Team
Chris Schlosser
Senior Vice President, Emerging Ventures
A
Alicia LaPorta
Director of Match Day Operations & Administration
Recent News
Sports Business Journal
2025-12-20
Sports Business Journal
2025-12-06
Sports Business Journal
2025-12-06
Company data provided by crunchbase