[Remote] Director, Customer Intelligence (Data Science & Machine Learning)

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform, and they are seeking a Director of the Customer Intelligence DS/ML Platform team to lead a combined DS/ML group. This role involves setting the multi-year strategy for applied science and platform capabilities, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and driving business outcomes through experimentation and analytics. 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 Skills • 10 or more years in Data Science/Applied ML (or equivalent) with 5 or more years leading senior ICs and/or managers; proven delivery of ML products at scale • Cross-functional leadership of ML, data, and software engineering, in close partnership with technical and business teams across an organization's internal DS/ML ecosystem • 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 • Experience in regulated industries (fintech/gaming) and real-time decisioning at scale • 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 • 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) • 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 Overview • Fanatics is a sports merchandise retailer that manufactures fan gear and jerseys across retail channels. It is a sub-organization of Kynetic. It was founded in 2002, and is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, with a workforce of 10001+ employees. Its website is Apply tot his job