Lead Software Engineer, Collector Engagement Team

About Us

About the Team

Fanatics Collectibles is the home of sports cards, trading cards, and collectibles for over 100 million fans worldwide. As part of the global Fanatics platform, we're rebuilding how collectors discover, buy, sell, and experience their hobby with world class technology and product experiences.

As part of Fanatics Collectibles’ continued global growth, we are establishing a new technology hub in Mexico City focused on operational excellence, platform scalability, trust, and customer experience. This team partners closely with Customer Experience (CX), Trust & Safety, Fraud Prevention, Payments, and Financial Operations organizations to build scalable systems and operational tooling that support millions of users and transactions globally.

About Topps Collector Engagement

Topps is transforming the trading card from a physical product into a connected collector experience. Through scanning, digital claiming, progression programs and partner activations, collectors can authenticate, track, unlock and redeem against the cards they own — bridging the physical product and the digital collector account.

Our Collector Engagement team builds that technology layer. The team delivers progression and quest experiences, redemption and reward mechanics, leaderboards, retail and live-event check-ins, in-venue collector moments, and the integrations that turn a scanned card into an account-level event. Programs launch against a calendar set by card releases and sports moments, so the team builds reusable platform capability rather than one-off campaign code.

The Role

We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer to lead a small cohort of engineers building the collector-facing platform behind Topps collector engagement programs while remaining deeply hands-on in the design and delivery of production software.

This role combines people leadership with senior-level frontend engineering. The Lead will be accountable for the team’s execution, technical quality and development, while personally owning and contributing to complex frontend capabilities, architecture decisions, performance and real-time interaction. Working closely with Product, Design, Backend and Platform Engineering, this role will translate program requirements into shared components, state handling and telemetry that serve many programs rather than one.

As a player-coach, this leader will set technical direction, establish priorities, coach and develop engineers, remove delivery blockers and raise engineering standards. The role is expected to spend significant time designing, coding, reviewing and operating production software while ensuring the broader cohort delivers against Collector Engagement priorities.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach and develop a small cohort of frontend engineers working on Collector Engagement, with accountability for team execution, technical quality and individual growth
• Set team priorities, allocate work and coordinate execution against Collector Engagement goals, release milestones and program commitments
• Remain deeply hands-on: design, develop, test and maintain complex application features and platform components supporting collector engagement programs
• Own the technical design and end-to-end delivery of significant frontend features and platform capabilities, contributing directly where technical complexity or delivery risk is highest
• Own the frontend architecture for program surfaces, including component model, state management, data fetching, and the boundary between shared platform and per-program code
• Solve complex and sometimes ambiguous engineering problems involving performance, scalability, reliability, real-time interaction and user experience
• Make sound technical and team execution decisions with appropriate independence, balancing program requirements, engineering quality, scalability, delivery commitments and long-term maintainability
• Lead architecture decisions, technical planning, design reviews and the evolution of frontend engineering patterns across the cohort
• Partner with Product, Design, Backend and Platform Engineering to translate program requirements into reusable technical solutions and clear engineering plans
• Define and evolve API contracts, client workflows and integration patterns, and challenge contracts that push avoidable complexity into the client
• Design the shared component and pattern layer with Design so a new program is largely configuration plus a thin custom layer
• Establish and enforce performance budgets for experiences used mid-event and on low-end devices
• Define the frontend telemetry standard so program analytics are consistent across surfaces
• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code and establish strong patterns and best practices through direct contribution, code review and coaching
• Improve engineering systems and practices across release management, CI/CD, testing, observability, crash reporting and operational support
• Proactively identify technical, delivery and team capacity risks; remove blockers; and escalate or adjust plans when needed
• Lead execution for initiatives that may span multiple engineers, systems or partner teams, ensuring ownership, sequencing and follow-through
• Provide regular coaching, actionable feedback, technical guidance and development support to engineers, and contribute to hiring and team planning as needed
• Create an environment of clear expectations, healthy engineering practices and strong collaboration across the Collector Engagement cohort
• Partner with engineering and product leadership on staffing, workload, delivery tradeoffs and execution planning for Collector Engagement priorities
• Influence engineering standards and practices within the team and collaborate with adjacent engineering teams on shared technical challenges
• Stay current with frontend ecosystem trends, libraries and development patterns and apply relevant advancements to the platform

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional frontend or mobile development experience, or equivalent demonstrated depth of experience
• Advanced proficiency in JavaScript and TypeScript and modern component-based development
• Strong experience with a modern component framework such as React or React Native
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering complex, production-scale consumer-facing applications
• Deep command of client-side state management and data fetching, including selecting the approach for a codebase rather than working within an existing one
• Strong understanding of application architecture, API design, networking, asynchronous programming and application lifecycle management
• Experience making architectural and technical design decisions for significant features or systems
• Strong understanding of application performance, reliability, testing, observability and debugging strategies
• Experience owning performance as a discipline, including measurement, budgets and scope reduction
• Experience identifying and resolving complex technical problems across multiple systems or components
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, release management and version control systems
• Ability to drive technical and team execution from ambiguous requirements through design, implementation, launch and operational support
• Demonstrated ability to make and influence technical decisions, set priorities, and coordinate engineers and partners toward shared outcomes
• Experience directly managing or formally leading engineers, including coaching, feedback, development, delegation and delivery accountability
• Strong judgment in balancing hands-on technical contribution with people leadership, team capacity and delivery needs
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across Engineering, Product and Design
• Professional working proficiency in English, with daily collaboration across US-based product and engineering partners
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing or scaling marketplace, e-commerce, loyalty, or other high-engagement consumer applications
• Experience leading a frontend platform, design-system engineering effort, or small product engineering team
• React Native at scale, or native iOS or Android depth
• Familiarity with GraphQL, WebSockets, streaming technologies, or other real-time communication patterns
• Experience with analytics, experimentation platforms and observability tooling
• Experience improving frontend architecture or engineering standards across a development team
• Experience managing delivery for technically complex initiatives involving multiple engineers or partner teams
• Passion for sports, collectibles, creators, or digital communities

Code-Writing Contribution

This is a highly hands-on people leadership role. The Lead Software Engineer is expected to make substantial individual contributions to production code while also being accountable for the execution, technical quality and development of a small cohort of engineers.

The role will personally solve complex and ambiguous technical problems, contribute to architecture and critical implementation work, and establish engineering patterns that improve scalability, reliability, maintainability and user experience. Hands-on contribution should complement, not replace, effective delegation and team leadership.

In addition to direct code contributions, the Lead Software Engineer sets priorities, coordinates execution, conducts design and code reviews, coaches engineers, provides feedback and development support, removes blockers, and ensures the team delivers against Collector Engagement commitments.

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