Lead Software Engineer in Chicago

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Job DescriptionJob Description

Excel Sports Management is an industry-leading sports agency representing top-tier talent, blue-chip brands and marquee properties. Our success is rooted in our people, our high character reputation and our commitment to creating a diverse and welcoming workplace. We focus on team chemistry, collaboration, strong relationships, valuable networks, and ambitious ideas to deliver innovative solutions that keep our clients and agency ahead of the curve.

Excel Sports Management is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE).

Position Overview:

We are seeking a Senior Full Stack Engineer with strong DevOps expertise and domain knowledge in sports to help design, build, deploy, and operate analytics-driven applications and platforms. This Director-level role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys full ownership of systems—from frontend and backend development to CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, and data platforms. This role will be based in our Chicago Office.

You will play a key role in building scalable, production-grade tools used by Excel teams and external partners, while helping establish best practices across engineering, data, and cloud operations.

This Position Is a Great Fit If You…

• Want end-to-end ownership, from application development through cloud deployment and operations
• Enjoy working across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and data without being siloed
• Care about building production-grade, scalable systems, not just prototypes
• Like turning ambiguous business needs into clean, well-architected solutions
• Believe in automation-first engineering, including Terraform-based IaC and CI/CD
• Enjoy collaborating with analytics, marketing, and client-facing teams
• Want your work to have direct, visible impact on internal teams and external clients
• Are excited to help shape technical standards while staying hands-on
• Have demonstrated experience in sports and want to take your career to the next level

Role & Responsibilities:

• Serve as the primary owner of AWS infrastructure, leveraging Terraform to manage Dockerized services, Airflow orchestration and data warehousing
• Design, develop, and maintain end-to-end applications, including frontend, backend, and infrastructure components
• Build and manage CI/CD pipelines that produce Docker containers and/or installable packages
• Define, provision, and manage cloud infrastructure using Terraform
• Architect and maintain cloud- systems with a focus on reliability, scalability, security, and cost efficiency
• Build and manage data lakes, data warehouses, or similar analytics platforms to support reporting, modeling, and client deliverables
• Develop backend services and data workflows, with a strong emphasis on Python-based systems
• Design and maintain data orchestration pipelines (e.g., Apache Airflow)
• Collaborate closely with analytics, marketing, product, and client-facing teams to translate business needs into technical solutions
• Lead and mentor a small engineering team providing technical guidance, performance feedback and task prioritization within the analytics group
• Support both internal stakeholders and external clients, ensuring solutions are robust, well-documented, and production-ready
• Implement best practices for testing, monitoring, deployment, and documentation
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues across application, data, and infrastructure layers while providing production support during standard working hours
• Lead relevant internal Center of Excellence for deepening and standardizing use of data in sports science and athlete performance

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with full stack ownership, including 2 years of experience in the sports industry
• Strong experience building frontend and backend applications
• Demonstrated expertise in DevOps and cloud engineering, including:
• CI/CD pipeline design and implementation
• Docker and containerized workloads
• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform
• Hands-on experience deploying and operating systems on AWS
• Strong proficiency in Python
• Strong proficiency in Node.js and modern React-based frontend frameworks
• Experience designing or working with data lakes, data warehouses, or large-scale analytics platforms
• Solid understanding of cloud networking, security, and observability
• Demonstrated ability to lead projects and proactively manage varied stakeholders
• Ability to work independently, take ownership, and operate in a fast-paced environment

Qualifications:

• Experience with Apache Airflow or similar orchestration tools
• Experience building or integrating AI/ML-driven solutions
• Familiarity with serverless and event-driven architectures
• Experience working in analytics, data science, or insight-driven product teams
• Strong interest in sports

The pay range for this position is: $200,000 per year - $240,000 per year. This position is also eligible for benefits and discretionary bonus.

Ultimately, the salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, time in role, business sector, and geographic location, among other criteria.

This position is not eligible for sponsorship.

Excel Sports Management provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to , , , citizenship status, physical or mental , , , creed, , , , and/or expression, genetic information, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

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