The posting
Job Description
Fanatics Collectibles is seeking a Senior Staff / Principal Infrastructure Engineer to provide technical leadership and own the infrastructure strategy supporting the Topps China WeChat e-commerce platform.
This is a senior individual-contributor role with significant autonomy, influence and business-critical responsibility. You will act as the principal technical authority for China-based infrastructure, defining its architecture, operational standards and long-term roadmap.
Due to data-residency and access requirements under China's Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), certain systems and user data must remain within China and cannot be directly accessed by our US-based engineering teams. You will provide the essential in-country technical presence required to operate these environments securely and compliantly.
You will oversee infrastructure operated by key technology partners—including XCXD, supporting the WeChat Mini-Program, and Baozun, supporting order management and fulfilment—while ensuring that all systems meet Fanatics' expectations for scalability, reliability, security and performance.
This is not a traditional operational DevOps role. You will set technical direction, challenge architecture decisions, govern vendor delivery and establish a resilient infrastructure model capable of supporting the continued growth of Fanatics Collectibles in China.
Key Responsibilities
China Infrastructure Strategy and Architecture
- Own the technical strategy, target architecture and infrastructure roadmap for Fanatics Collectibles in China.
- Establish architecture principles and engineering standards covering scalability, availability, security, observability, recoverability and cost efficiency.
- Evaluate current infrastructure and identify architectural risks, capability gaps and opportunities for long-term improvement.
- Make pragmatic technical decisions that balance global engineering standards with China-specific regulatory and operational requirements.
- Provide senior technical guidance for future platform integrations, market expansion and changes to the China technology ecosystem.
In-Country Technical Ownership
- Act as the principal in-country authority for infrastructure and production systems that US-based teams cannot directly access.
- Serve as the highest-level technical escalation point for critical incidents, infrastructure risks and complex production issues.
- Own the technical operating model for systems processing or storing China-resident customer and transaction data.
- Ensure that operational processes, production access and engineering controls are clearly documented, auditable and sustainable.
- Establish runbooks, escalation paths and decision frameworks that reduce operational risk and reliance on individual knowledge.
Vendor Architecture and Governance
- Provide technical governance across vendor-managed platforms operated by XCXD, Baozun and other technology partners.
- Review and challenge vendor architecture, deployment models, infrastructure controls and technical recommendations.
- Define and monitor service-level objectives, operational metrics and engineering expectations across vendors.
- Ensure vendors maintain appropriate monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, backup, disaster-recovery and incident-response capabilities.
- Lead technical reviews, incident post-mortems and remediation programmes, ensuring that root causes are addressed rather than short-term fixes applied.
- Hold vendors accountable for delivery while maintaining effective, collaborative working relationships.
Reliability and Production Engineering
- Define the reliability and production-readiness standards for the Topps China e-commerce platform.
- Establish comprehensive observability across infrastructure, applications, integrations and vendor-operated services.
- Lead capacity planning, performance engineering, resilience testing and disaster-recovery preparation.
- Develop incident-management processes that enable rapid diagnosis, clear escalation and effective communication during critical events.
- Identify recurring operational issues and drive automation or architectural improvements that reduce risk and manual effort.
- Ensure the platform is prepared for high-traffic product releases, campaigns and commercial events.
Launch Readiness and Performance
- Own the technical readiness framework for key milestones, including internal purchasing, soft launch and full retail launch.
- Define performance benchmarks, launch criteria and go/no-go recommendations for engineering leadership.
- Lead stress, load, failover and recovery testing in partnership with XCXD and other vendors.
- Assess infrastructure capacity across WeChat, payment, order-management and fulfilment integrations.
- Identify launch risks early and drive cross-functional mitigation plans through to completion.
Data Security, PIPL and Regulatory Compliance
- Ensure infrastructure processing Chinese user data operates within approved data-residency and access boundaries.
- Partner with Legal, Security, Privacy and Engineering teams to translate PIPL and wider Chinese cybersecurity requirements into effective technical controls.
- Define appropriate controls for identity and access management, encryption, logging, auditing, data retention and incident response.
- Act as the senior technical point of contact for infrastructure audits, compliance reviews and security assessments.
- Maintain clear separation between China-resident systems and global environments where required.
Cross-Border Technical Leadership
- Act as the technical bridge between China-based operations, external vendors and US-based engineering leadership.
- Communicate infrastructure health, architectural decisions, technical debt, risks and investment requirements clearly to senior stakeholders.
- Provide sufficient visibility to global teams without exposing China-resident data or requiring unauthorised system access.
- Influence engineering priorities across organisational and geographic boundaries.
- Translate complex infrastructure and compliance topics into clear business impact and actionable recommendations.
Engineering Excellence
- Drive greater automation across infrastructure provisioning, deployment, monitoring and operational processes.
- Establish modern practices across infrastructure as code, CI/CD, configuration management and platform observability.
- Mentor engineers and vendor teams, raising the quality of technical decision-making and operational delivery.
- Contribute to global infrastructure standards while representing the specific requirements of the China market.
- Help shape the future China engineering organisation as the platform and business continue to scale.
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, DevOps, site reliability or platform engineering, including experience operating at Senior Staff, Principal or equivalent technical-leadership level.
- Demonstrated ownership of architecture and production infrastructure for large-scale, customer-facing platforms.
- Deep knowledge of cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, networking, Linux, observability, automation and production operations.
- Strong experience with infrastructure as code, CI/CD, containerisation and modern cloud-native engineering practices.
- Experience governing or auditing vendor-managed infrastructure and holding external partners accountable for technical outcomes.
- Proven ability to lead complex incident response, root-cause analysis, resilience planning and disaster-recovery programmes.
- Experience supporting high-volume e-commerce, payments, digital platforms or similarly business-critical systems.
- Strong understanding of security controls, data residency and privacy requirements within China, including practical knowledge of PIPL.
- Ability to influence senior stakeholders and technical teams without relying on direct reporting authority.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical risks and decisions to both engineering and business audiences.
- Professional fluency in Mandarin and English.
- Based in China and legally authorised to work in-country.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with China-based cloud platforms such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud or AWS China.
- Strong familiarity with WeChat Mini-Program architecture, WeChat Pay and the wider China digital ecosystem.
- Experience integrating e-commerce platforms with order-management, payment, warehouse or fulfilment systems.
- Previous responsibility for launching and scaling a new platform or market from an early stage.
- Experience operating within regulated, data-sensitive or geographically restricted technology environments.
- Familiarity with Chinese cybersecurity, network-security and data-governance frameworks beyond PIPL.
The above list of job duties is not exclusive or exhaustive and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.
Subject to applicable laws, Fanatics Collectibles may choose to run a background check.
Ensure your Fanatics job offer is legitimate and don’t fall victim to fraud. Fanatics never seeks payment from job applicants. Feel free to ask your recruiter for a phone call or other type of communication for interview, and ensure your communication is coming from a Fanatics email address (including @collectfanatics.com). For added security, where possible, apply through our company website at www.fanaticsinc.com/careers.
Fanatics Collectibles is a new model and vision for the hobby, fundamentally changing the experience for current and future collectors, leagues, and players across many U.S. and international professional and college sports. The organization has long-term, exclusive rights to design, manufacture and distribute trading cards for several sports and entertainment properties, including MLB, MLBPA, the Premier League, MLS, UFC, Formula 1 as well as Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, among others. In January 2022, Fanatics Collectibles announced the acquisition of Topps, establishing the preeminent licensed trading card brand as the cornerstone of Fanatics’ trading cards and collectibles business, and jumpstarted its MLB and MLBPA rights to design, manufacture and distribute trading cards
