Tech Lead / Manager — Operations Automation Platform

Job Summary: 

Engineering at Gametime

You will be a key contributor to the Engineering team responsible for building and maintaining the client-side applications and backend systems that power the Gametime experience for millions of users. We empower engineers to take full ownership of their code and foster a culture grounded in testing, code reviews, observability, experimentation, and operational excellence. At Gametime, we value collaboration, inclusivity, and the strength of diverse perspectives — creating an environment where people love to build together.

We are also investing deeply in the future of AI. This includes building internal tools and workflows powered by AI, incorporating agentic systems into our backend architecture, and preparing our marketplace and infrastructure to be AI-ready. Engineers are encouraged to explore and adopt AI capabilities in their development process, and those who contribute to advancing AI adoption within our stack will play a key role in shaping that evolution.

The Role

We’re seeking a hands-on Tech Lead / Manager to lead a team of engineers on our Operations Automation Platform team. This team is focused on identifying high-impact internal workflows and building AI-powered automation, agentic solutions, and powerful tooling to streamline and scale operational effectiveness.

The ideal candidate is a senior engineer with a strong backend background who thrives in ambiguous environments, has a strong product sense, and enjoys working at the intersection of technology, operations, and innovation. You’ll provide architectural direction, mentor engineers, and partner closely with Fan Ops, Ticket Ops, Product Ops, and others to turn opportunities into automated, scalable systems.  This is a high-impact technical leadership opportunity for someone who wants to shape how Gametime operates internally. You’ll be working on a lean, empowered team with room to experiment, invent, and drive automation-first thinking.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide technical leadership for the Operations Automation Platform team, shaping architectural direction and driving delivery of automation-focused backend systems.
• Guide the technical/product roadmap in collaboration with Engineering, Product and Ops stakeholders, identifying high-leverage opportunities for internal efficiency.
• Design, prototype, and lead the implementation of systems and tools that automate manual workflows, especially those that can benefit from AI or agentic solutions.
• Actively contribute to backend development where needed, especially in early stages of projects or to unblock team members.
• Lead technical design discussions, code reviews, and drive adoption of best practices for reliability, observability, and maintainability.
• Mentor engineers on the team, elevate technical quality, and contribute to performance reviews via feedback and coaching.
• Evangelize new technologies — including AI/LLMs — that can improve the velocity, intelligence, or stability of our internal systems.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with multiple Ops teams to deeply understand their workflows and pain points, and drive engineering-led solutions.
• Maintain a healthy balance between speed and long-term quality, knowing when to ship scrappy MVPs and when to invest in robust infrastructure.

Key Competencies:

• Backend Development: Hands-on experience building backend systems using Golang or other backend languages (e.g., Python, Java, Ruby, etc).
• System Fundamentals: Understanding of distributed systems principles, REST APIs, and backend application architecture.
• API Integration: Ability to work with internal and third-party APIs reliably and securely.
• Cloud Infrastructure: Exposure to AWS, GCP, or other cloud platforms is a plus.
• Event-Driven Systems (Bonus): Experience working with messaging systems like Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar.
• Databases: Experience with relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, MySQL) and/or NoSQL technologies (e.g. MongoDB, DynamoDB).
• Team Collaboration: Strong product sensibility and communication skills; comfortable engaging with non-technical stakeholders and driving alignment
• Bonus:
• Experience with automation, internal tooling, or operations-facing systems.
• Hands-on experience with AI-enhanced systems or agentic architectures.
• Experience working with operations tools such as Kustomer, AWS Connect, Zendesk etc. 

Minimum Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience: 8+ years in software engineering, preferably with backend systems