Distinguished Architect - Enterprise Data & Integration

Distinguished Architect, Enterprise Data & Integration

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 Distinguished Architect, Enterprise Data & Integration will play a critical role in setting enterprise data and integration architecture direction across direct-to-consumer, wholesale, manufacturing, and fulfillment at Fanatics Commerce.

ROLE OVERVIEW

Fanatics Commerce is hiring a Distinguished Architect to set the direction for enterprise data and integration architecture across the company, reporting to the VP, Architecture, with accountability spanning canonical business entity models, operational integrations connecting transactional systems, and analytical data flows that support how the business is measured and run. Fanatics Commerce operates at significant scale across a systems landscape built through both organic growth and acquisition, and this role partners with engineering, product, and data leaders to shape platform investments advancing that architecture — including the ERP modernization program, the continued evolution of data platforms, and AI-driven enablement across commerce and supply chain. The Distinguished Architect, Enterprise Data & Integration 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 with engineering, product, and data leaders to set architectural direction for data and integration platforms, shape major platform transitions, and make the technical and economic case behind vendor and build decisions across Fanatics Commerce.
• Serve as a primary voice for architecture to the engineering organization and a trusted partner to leaders across technology and the business, representing Fanatics architecture externally through speaking, writing, and participation in public forums.
• Contribute to enterprise architecture by bringing sound judgment to application, platform, and security design decisions across the broader technology organization.

People Leadership:

• Mentor senior and principal architects, raising the standard of architectural practice and enabling the engineering organization to build well against established standards and reference patterns.
• Articulate architectural direction clearly across audiences — from executive leadership to rooms full of engineers — ensuring choices are understood, documented, and revisitable over time.

Fan & Customer Impact (Obsessed with Fans)

• Own integration architecture across transactional systems, data lake and data warehouses, and external trading partners, maintaining the resiliency and availability that keeps order, inventory, product, and customer data flowing reliably to fans and business partners.
• Support the design of enterprise data architecture that makes data trustworthy and reachable for AI applications and conversational experiences, directly enabling better fan-facing commerce and personalization capabilities.
• Ensure integration architecture with external trading partners — including marketplaces, wholesale customers, third-party logistics providers, and carriers — is robust, current, and capable of supporting the fan experience at global scale.
• Partner with Data Governance, Information Security, and Compliance to ensure data and integration architecture meets privacy, regulatory, and contractual obligations, protecting fan and business data responsibly.

Innovation & Problem Solving (Limitless Entrepreneurial Spirit)

• Define the enterprise data architecture — the canonical models and standards that shape how Fanatics Commerce represents its business in data — and set the direction for how new and acquired systems join that landscape.
• Drive the design of a semantic or metrics layer serving analytics and operational consumers, and assess enterprise data readiness to ground AI and agentic applications across commerce and supply chain.
• Shape the evolution of data lake and warehouse environments at enterprise scale, including how established platforms such as Snowflake, StarRocks, and Iceberg coexist and transition, bringing architectural judgment to platform selection and build-versus-buy decisions.
• Apply command of enterprise integration patterns — including event-driven architecture, API design and governance, and messaging and streaming platforms such as Kafka — to advance the integration maturity of Fanatics Commerce's technology landscape.

Ownership & Execution (Determined & Relentless Mindset)

• Establish data and integration architecture standards and reference patterns that enable engineering teams across Fanatics Commerce to build consistently and well, and maintain the durable record of architectural direction through models, diagrams, and decision records.
• Architect for production reality — designing for failure, recovery, and reconciliation from the outset across integrations spanning order management, inventory, warehouse management, manufacturing, ERP, and commerce platforms.
• Ensure data and integration architecture accounts for privacy and regulatory exposure, including obligations around data classification, residency, and retention, across a complex multi-system environment with significant compliance obligations.
• Lead the technical and economic case for major platform investments, including the ongoing cost of what Fanatics Commerce operates, holding the organization accountable to architecture that is both strategically sound and financially disciplined.

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 in enterprise software architecture, the majority spent in data and integration architecture at enterprise scale, with depth built across multiple technology generations and strong grounding in application and distributed systems architecture, including service decomposition, domain boundaries, and the tradeoffs that shape how large systems are built.
• Extensive experience in data modeling and data management across complex, multi-system environments — including master and reference data, data quality, and lineage — and demonstrated experience architecting data lake and warehouse environments at enterprise scale across modern platforms such as Snowflake, StarRocks, and Iceberg.
• Deep expertise integrating transactional systems — including order management, inventory, warehouse management, manufacturing, ERP, and commerce platforms, including systems inherited through acquisition — and experience integrating with external trading partners across EDI and modern API-based onboarding.
• Command of enterprise integration patterns including event-driven architecture, API design and governance, and messaging and streaming platforms such as Kafka, with a well-formed view of where each fits in a large-scale commerce and supply chain environment.
• Experience designing a semantic or metrics layer serving analytics and operational consumers, and the judgment to assess whether enterprise data is ready to ground AI applications and conversational experiences.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction across an organization without direct authority, with a track record of mentoring senior architects and raising architectural practice standards.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with comfort presenting architecture to executives, engineering audiences, and public forums, and documentation and decision records that outlive individual involvement.
• Strong cloud architecture skills at enterprise scale, and architectural experience in environments with significant privacy and regulatory exposure, including data classification, residency, and retention obligations.
• Retail, ecommerce, or consumer goods experience preferred.

Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field required; Master's degree preferred.

Hybrid: The primary place of performance of this role is the Company's office located in Redwood City OR Atlanta, GA subject to the Company's current hybrid work policy. This role currently requires in-office presence Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

At Fanatics, we operate with a BOLD mindset—We Build Championship Teams, we're Obsessed with Fans, we embrace a Limitless Entrepreneurial Spirit, and we approach every challenge with a Determined & Relentless Mindset. If you're ready to contribute to a dynamic, fast-paced environment that thrives on collaboration and growth, we want you to be part of our team.