Senior Staff/ Principal DevOps Engineer
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Shanghai, China
- Work setup
- Onsite
- Seniority
- Principal
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 10+ years
- Category
- Devops
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 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.
Nice to have
- 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.
Full 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 ResponsibilitiesChina 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.