Senior Director - Manufacturing Technology Strategy

About the Company

Fanatics Collectibles is a new company operating at the intersection of collectibles, culture, and technology. Backed by world-class investors, operators, and sports & entertainment partners, we are building the global leader in next-generation collectibles. As part of the broader Fanatics ecosystem, we leverage a digital sports platform that spans over 900 sports properties and engages more than 81 million fans. Together, we are reimagining every part of the collectibles experience for fans, partners, and creators.

Mission

Serve as a subject matter expert in manufacturing scale, automation, robotics, and operational systems while helping leaders define the capabilities, operating models, decision-making operating structures, and strategic priorities required to support future card production growth.

The role partners across Operations, Finance, Product, Supply Chain, Facilities, and Manufacturing Technology to identify capability gaps, guide strategic initiatives, develop scalable operating models, and provide expert review and feedback on major investments and improvement efforts.

Rather than owning day-to-day execution, this position helps ensure the organization is making sound decisions, building the right capabilities, and developing the foundation required for long-term growth and card production.

Why This Role Is Important

As we continue to grow, the complexity of manufacturing operations, automation investments, capacity expansion, technology deployment, and cross-functional coordination continues to increase.

Today, many strategic initiatives are owned by leaders whose primary responsibility is operating the business on a day-to-day basis. While these leaders possess deep expertise within their respective functions, limited time and competing operational priorities often make it difficult to step back and define the future-state operating model, identify capability gaps, establish governance structures, and develop the long-term plans required to support sustainable growth.

As a result, strategic initiatives are often evaluated independently, decisions can become reactive, ownership may be unclear, and critical organizational capabilities may not be developed before they are needed. This increases execution risk, slows decision-making, creates inefficiencies across functions, and can lead to investments being made without a clear understanding of long-term operational requirements.

This role provides dedicated expertise and organizational capacity focused on helping the business define where it is going, what capabilities are required to support that future, and what foundational work must be completed to achieve it. By partnering across Operations, Manufacturing Technology, Finance, Supply Chain, Product, and Executive Leadership, this position helps ensure the organization is building the systems, processes, mechanisms, and capabilities necessary to scale effectively

Role Positioning

This role does not own day-to-day manufacturing operations, project execution, engineering implementation, or continuous improvement activities.

Instead, the role serves as a strategic advisor, coach, and subject matter expert focused on helping the organization define future-state capabilities, evaluate strategic opportunities, identify organizational gaps, and establish the decision-making, planning, and operating mechanisms required to support long-term growth.

The role works closely with functional leaders and teams, providing guidance, mentorship, constructive challenge, and expert feedback to help improve decision-making, strengthen strategic plans, develop organizational capabilities, and increase execution readiness. While responsibility for implementation remains with the appropriate functional teams, this role helps ensure initiatives are thoughtfully evaluated, aligned to long-term objectives, and supported by the capabilities necessary for success.

Problems This Role Helps Solve

• Lack of a Defined Future-State Operating Model - The organization does not always have a shared view of how manufacturing, automation, planning, finance, and operational systems should function together as the business scales.
• Reactive Decision-Making - Many decisions are made in response to immediate needs rather than as part of a structured long-term strategy, increasing the risk of misaligned priorities and investments.
• Unclear Ownership and Accountability - As initiatives become more cross-functional, responsibilities, decision rights, and accountability can become difficult to define and maintain.
• Missing Organizational Capabilities - Critical capabilities, processes, tools, reporting mechanisms, and subject matter expertise are not always identified and developed before they become constraints to growth.
• Inconsistent Evaluation of Strategic Initiatives - Automation, technology, process improvement, and capacity expansion opportunities are often evaluated using different assumptions, methodologies, and success criteria.
• Limited Cross-Functional Alignment - Teams may be pursuing improvements independently without a common framework for prioritization, planning, decision-making, and execution.
• Lack of Scalable Standardized Mechanisms - The business lacks consistent forums, review processes, and decision-making structures needed to effectively guide strategic initiatives as complexity increases.

Organizational Value

This role creates dedicated organizational capacity focused on the future of the manufacturing business.

While operational leaders remain focused on executing today’s priorities, this position helps ensure the organization is simultaneously preparing for future growth by identifying capability gaps, defining future-state operating requirements, evaluating strategic opportunities, and guiding the development of the systems, processes, standardized structures, and organizational capabilities needed to support long-term scale.

By leveraging deep expertise in manufacturing operations, automation, robotics, and manufacturing technology, the role serves as a force multiplier for leadership teams. Through strategic guidance, coaching, constructive challenge, and expert review, this position helps improve decision-making, strengthen cross-functional alignment, accelerate capability development, reduce execution risk, and increase organizational readiness for future capacity expansion.

Success is measured through the organization’s ability to make better strategic decisions, develop critical capabilities, improve cross-functional alignment, and build the foundation necessary to support long-term manufacturing growth.

Core Responsibilities

Future-State Planning

• Help define and the future-state operating model required to support growth and capacity expansion.
• Identify capabilities, systems, processes, and organizational structures required to support that future state.
• Develop strategic roadmaps and glidepaths for capability development.

• Partner with business leaders to evaluate future capacity requirements and help define the operational, technological, and organizational capabilities required to support planned growth.

Subject Matter Expertise

• Serve as an internal expert in manufacturing operations, automation, robotics, systems, and scale.
• Provide technical and operational guidance on major initiatives, investments, and improvement opportunities.
• Review plans and assumptions to identify risks, gaps, and opportunities.

Capability Development

• Identify organizational capability gaps that may limit future growth.
• Partner with leaders to define ownership, roles, responsibilities, and decision-making structures.
• Help establish frameworks, standards, and best practices that improve organizational effectiveness.

Strategic Guidance

• Facilitate alignment across functions on strategic priorities and major initiatives.
• Help create appropriate forums, review mechanisms, and decision-making processes.
• Provide visibility into progress, risks, dependencies, and organizational readiness.

Coaching & Mentorship

• Mentor teams and leaders on operational excellence, automation strategy, planning, and scalable execution.
• Help teams develop stronger business cases, planning approaches, and implementation strategies.
• Act as a force multiplier by sharing expertise and helping others succeed.
• Provide regular feedback through established business review cadences.

Success Looks Like

Within 6 months:

• Future-state operating model defined.
• Key capability gaps identified.
• Strategic roadmap and glidepath established.

Within 12 months:

• Standardization and decision-making mechanisms operating effectively.
• Foundational capability-building initiatives underway.
• Teams are using common frameworks and planning approaches.
• Leadership has improved visibility into priorities, ownership, execution readiness, and impact.

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

NYC Salary Range 220000 - 275000 USD