This position is open to fully-remote candidates who can work from anywhere in the United States and Canada. Candidates also have the option to work from one of our office locations in Chicago or Toronto. 

Who we are: Vivid Seats is the largest independent online ticket marketplace, sending tens of millions of fans to live events. We believe in the power of experiences and are fiercely dedicated to building products that inspire human connections. Named as one of Built In Chicago's top 10 places to work in 2021, we believe that our People are our greatest competitive advantage. To support our People, we have built a company culture that empowers our employees to embrace challenges, encourages unity through collaboration, and seeks to constantly evolve by leveraging data and inspiring innovation.  

The Opportunity: 
As the Senior Manager, Data Engineering, you'll drive our overall data strategy, develop and scale data systems, and coach engineers at a thriving e-commerce company. You'll influence the transactional systems, analytics platform (warehouse and BI), and data integration, which includes messaging and batch processing. Leading a team at Vivid Seats, you'll stay up to date on new and emerging technologies, plan accordingly to incorporate valuable concepts to enhance our applications, and continually improve the development environment.  

For an e-commerce company, it all starts at the transactional systems and thinking through the scalability and 24x7 availability. This includes collaborating with the engineering team on the operational data model, proposing the proper tools for the deployment, and getting consensus to make decisions.  

Equally important to our data strategy, is the focus on integration services to the warehouse. You'll propose and advocate for standardized methods to integrate messaging & batch streams of data, working with the data team to socialize best practices and ensure data pipelines are built robustly. Building and maintaining a reliable and standardized alert systems will ensure the team can address any issues before stakeholders are negatively impacted.  

You'll also partner with the security group to ensure data is secure, and the team has created and allocated the proper roles. You'll work with internal stakeholders to understand their needs and timelines, discuss the options which are available, and collaborate as to the best approach balancing business value with creating elegant solutions.  

Most importantly you'll develop, coach and retain engineers in a high-performance team while participating in hiring initiatives to attract, screen and hire new engineering talent. You'll carry out performance management, coach, and deliver feedback on a regular basis so the team is appropriately staffed, challenged, and impactful.  

How your role contributes to the success of Vivid Seats:  

• Mature operational stability of the data platform through best practices, automation and monitoring.  
• Lead the design and maturity of data systems and automated processes for our underlying cloud infrastructure and deployment pipelines.  
• Remain up to date on new and emerging technologies, planning accordingly to incorporate valuable concepts to enhance our data schema and capabilities.  
• Introduce innovative data solutions that give Vivid Seats a competitive advantage. 
• Coach engineers, encourage team members, and champion data priorities across engineering teams.  
• Work cross functionally in Agile development teams that deploy to AWS production environments on demand, multiple times a day.  
• Tackle some of the most difficult challenges securing an e-commerce marketplace by effectively managing data tooling and features that maximize value, protect sensitive data, and efficiency across the organization.  
• Partner with a team of Product Owners, Quality Engineers, and Engineers throughout the software development lifecycle deliver exceptional software, showcasing your work at the end each work cycle.  
• Ensure compliance with society, regulatory, and industry standards. 

How your role expectations will progress as a Senior Engineer in the first 30, 60, and 180 days:  

30 days in:  

• Complete new hire orientation, gaining the resources you need to be successful. 
• Learn how ticket marketplaces operate and how you'll contribute to providing great experiences for our customers. 
• Acclimate to team and company norms, business objectives, and Vivid Seats values. 
• Set weekly touch points with direct reports to understand their role, motivations, and needs, building trust and leading with empathy. 
• Develop basic understanding of applications, tech stack, and development process.  
• Understand our existing practices, frameworks, and tools. 
• Meet our key business and technology stakeholders to understand their data priorities and challenges. 

90 days in:  

• Enhance our approaches, methods, or technologies for work intake, OLTP, OLAP, migration, and BI systems.  
• Complete current state and needs assessment and establish a prioritized 12-month project view. 
• Partner with Information Security to ensure appropriate data privacy controls are included in the overall data management framework. 
• Build, maintain, and leverage internal and external relationships to achieve progress and advance data management objectives.  
• Apply technical learnings that align with the product roadmap to overall department and organizational goals that drive company initiatives forward.  
• Define proposal for expanded data management team responsibilities, roles, and capabilities. 
• Enhance our approaches, methods, or technologies to mitigate risks and improve efficiencies.  
• Lead team planning, estimations and software design sessions. 

180 days in:  

• Design and implement process improvements that positively impacts the team and our overall data posture.  
• Mentor others, playing an active role in elevating the skill sets of those you work with. 
• Provide development training to engineers and provide guidance on new data capabilities (e.g., self-service, automation, performance optimization). 
• Guide the team's work so that it fits into the larger team and engineering group objectives.  
• Improve performance, scalability, and data privacy in core systems and applications managed by the team and contribute to engineering group objectives. 
• Continuously evaluate the organization's existing data management practices, define and measure data-related activities, and deliver concrete improvements to the data management program within the organization. 

What You'll Bring: 

• Experience and passion for building teams and developing team member careers. 
• Experience in developing mid- to long-term data strategy roadmaps. 
• Strong understanding of data governance principals and data abstraction. 
• Working knowledge of relational database platforms (preferably MySQL, Postgres) and performance optimization approaches. 
• Working knowledge of OLAP, OLTP, BI, and pipeline technologies; and comfortable leading teams across disciplines. 
• Proficiency in working in Mac and Linux environment. 
• Experience running data platforms within a cloud environment (AWS, GCP, Azure). 
• Experience with agile team methodologies and tools like Jira. 
• A willingness to participate hands-on if needed. 

Our Commitment:  
We are an equal opportunity employer that values the critical importance of a diverse workforce and sense of belonging. Many of our roles have flexible requirements and we encourage you to apply regardless of whether you meet every qualification.  

Vivid Seats provides competitive compensation; bonus incentives; FLEX PTO; mental health days; medical, dental, and vision insurance; 401K matching; monthly credits and discounts for attending live events; remote work and snack allowances; and a variety of additional workplace perks.