Global Head of DevOps

Company Description

We’re the world’s leading sports technology company, at the intersection between sports, media, and betting. More than 1,700 sports federations, media outlets, betting operators, and consumer platforms across 120 countries rely on our know-how and technology to boost their business.

At Sportradar we’ve experienced a wonderful period of sustained hypergrowth through a highly focused strategy based upon industry-leading product innovation. To continue this trajectory, we’re looking for an addition to a group of highly experienced engineers in a DevOps solution and technology team. Working closely with engineering teams to foster a strong culture of collaboration, system development lifecycles, and infrastructure as code practices. Develop and support high-quality digital solutions, with a focus on building operational awareness, supporting configuration management, and ensuring quality. Become integral to a team of software developers, test analysts, and product owners as part of the DevOps Practice.

Sportradar is a truly digital organisation with a very broad array of B2B applications and services. As we embark on a very exciting technical transformation with a focus on cloud migration and microservice architectures, it is a great time to join our team!

Job Description

As the Global Head of DevOps, you will be at the helm of our organization's DevOps practice, providing visionary leadership and driving strategic initiatives across the globe. This pivotal role demands exceptional management skills, technical expertise in DevOps tooling and practices, and the ability to set direction and oversee diverse teams. You will leverage your technical expertise in DevOps tooling and practices to lead the design, implementation, and improvement of the software delivery lifecycle for a diverse array of products and services. You will empower teams to take ownership of their processes and foster an environment where ideas are valued and innovation thrives.

There are several key challenge areas:

Effective Team Leadership: As the Global Head of DevOps, you will need to cultivate a cohesive and high-performing team, promoting a culture of trust, respect, and continuous learning across multiple regions and time-zones.

Change Management and Transformation: You will be accountable for fostering a DevOps-centric culture for change, encouraging innovation, and advocating for the adoption of new technologies and processes.

Scaling and Complexity: Ensuring scalability, maintainability, and consistency in Sportradar’s technology ecosystem across various projects and teams will be a challenge you will tackle head-on.

Aligning Business and Technology Objectives: As the Global Head of DevOps, you will play a pivotal role in aligning technology initiatives with the overall business strategy. This requires a deep understanding of business objectives and the ability to prioritize technology initiatives that drive business value and contribute to the company's success.

Effective Resource Management: Managing resources effectively and optimizing budgets while ensuring the delivery of high-quality products and services can be a delicate balancing act. You will be responsible for resource allocation, capacity planning, and ensuring that teams have the necessary tools and support to succeed.

Encouraging Continuous Improvement: Instilling a mindset of continuous improvement within DevOps teams is crucial for staying ahead of evolving industry trends and maintaining a competitive edge. Your challenge will be to promote a culture of experimentation, feedback, and continuous learning throughout the organization.

Vendor Management and Technology Evaluation: Making informed decisions about technology adoption, selecting suitable vendors, and evaluating third-party tools will be essential in enhancing the organization's technological capabilities.

Qualifications

As the global Head of DevOps, you will need to stay updated with industry trends and assess which technologies align best with the organization's needs.

Line Management and Hiring: Leading and managing managers within the DevOps organization brings its own set of challenges, such as ensuring consistent leadership practices, providing mentorship, and fostering career growth for your direct reports. Additionally, attracting and hiring top talent in the highly competitive technology landscape will be crucial to building a strong and capable DevOps team.

YOUR PROFILE:

• A proven track record of leading and managing global DevOps teams, with an ability to empower and support teams while fostering a collaborative and innovative culture.
• Extensive experience and expertise in DevOps tooling and practices, demonstrated through successful design, implementation, and improvement of software delivery lifecycles for diverse products and services.
• In-depth knowledge of Kubernetes container orchestration and administration, enabling you to effectively deploy and manage applications in Kubernetes environments.
• Proficiency in serverless technologies, such as AWS Lambda or AWS Fargate, with a proven track record of designing and implementing serverless architectures. Your expertise in serverless computing will enable efficient and scalable solutions, reducing operational overhead and enhancing application performance.
• Substantial expertise in at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), with a minimum of 10 years of hands-on experience, allowing you to make informed decisions and optimize cloud-based solutions.
• Extensive experience in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodologies and tools, such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible. Your proficiency in IaC will be instrumental in automating the provisioning and management of infrastructure, ensuring consistency, reproducibility, and scalability across complex environments.
• Proven experience in GNU/Linux OS administration, with a track record of managing production-grade services on Linux servers for minimum 10 years.
• A background in application development, technical architecture, operations or application support within an agile and continuous delivery environment.
• Strong expertise in observability practices, including the implementation of monitoring, logging, and tracing solutions. Your deep understanding of tools such as New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, Elastic stack and distributed tracing systems will enable comprehensive insights into system performance, application behaviour, and potential issues, allowing for proactive and data-driven decision-making.
• Strong expertise in designing and optimizing CI/CD pipelines, with a minimum of 10 years of hands-on experience, driving efficiency and quality throughout the software delivery process across large organisations.
• Advanced scripting skills in languages like Bash, Python, Ruby, Go, or others, empowering you to automate processes and achieve reproducible results.
• A deep understanding of version control systems and how they contribute to efficient collaboration and version management in large-scale projects.
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, allowing you to engage effectively with stakeholders at all levels, drive cross-functional collaboration, and present complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Proven capability in implementing and fostering agile practices across DevOps teams. Your expertise in agile methodologies will drive iterative and incremental improvements, facilitating rapid and adaptive responses to changing requirements.
• A collaborative, team-oriented mindset, with the ability to inspire and motivate individuals and foster a positive work environment.

Additional Information

OUR OFFER:

• Leading a well-established team of experienced, talented DevOps engineers
• Work with Kubernetes, microservice architectures, cloud providers, and other modern and exciting technologies
• Become part of one of the fastest-growing businesses in the digital sports environment and help us scale our operations
• Be part of a highly motivated, innovative, and dynamic team with people from more than 20 nationalities in our offices
• Collaborate with supporting colleagues from all over the world
• Exciting job field with the opportunity for personal development
• Education and training, like German and English courses and Sportradar eAcademy
• Hybrid working possibilities and flexible working hours
• Health Care, workshops and life insurance policy
• Tickets for sports events and concerts, as well as darts, table football, and table tennis for after-work sports activities in the office Team activities, like Happy Hours or charity, summer and year-end party

Sportradar is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to encourage diversity within our teams. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to among other things, your background, status, or personal preferences