Job Description
PlayOn Sports is the leading platform for high school sports media, streaming live games to millions of fans and powering the next generation of prep sports experiences. We partner with schools, state associations, and athletic programs across the country to bring every play to every fan, wherever they are.
PlayOn is investing heavily in its computer vision and artificial intelligence pipeline—transforming raw game footage into highlights, text recaps, statistics, and play-by-play breakdowns. This Streaming Intelligence initiative sits at the intersection of live video, machine learning, and high school sports fandom, and it has the potential to fundamentally change how fans experience prep sports.
We’re looking for a Senior Project Manager to drive execution and operational excellence across this AI-powered product line. You will partner directly with the Principal Product Manager who owns the Streaming Intelligence roadmap - translating their product vision and vendor strategy into structured feature delivery where you will executive against the plans, orchestrate cross-team coordination, and provide transparent progress reporting.
You’ll be embedded in a team working with vision AI models, benchmarking pipelines, and ML vendor integrations. You need to be comfortable in this world: understanding model accuracy tradeoffs, pipeline architecture, and the iterative nature of AI product development. In addition to the Streaming Intelligence product line, this role will serve as a key delivery partner to PlayOn’s Data Platform team (DPT), modernizingour data warehouse and analytics infrastructure. The DPT is shifting from foundational buildout to platform leverage: powering self-serve analytics, real-time data capabilities, and agentic AI enablement across the business.
The Outcomes You’ll Deliver:
- High-impact, high-visibility work. You’ll be at the center of PlayOn’s most strategic AI and data investments—spanning both the Streaming Intelligence product line and the Data Platform—with direct exposure to executive leadership and board-level initiatives.
- A true partnership model. You’ll work hand-in-hand with a Principal PM who owns strategy and vision, giving you the context to drive execution with purpose—not just process.
- AI isn’t a buzzword here. PlayOn is actively building AI into how we work and what we ship. You’ll be embedded in that transformation from day one.
- Real-world scale. PlayOn streams tens of thousands of live high school games annually. Your work will directly impact how millions of fans experience their athletes’ moments.
- Mission that matters. High school athletes don’t have broadcast deals or highlight reels—yet. You’ll help change that.
In this role, you can expect to
- Serve as the primary delivery partner for the Streaming Intelligence product line and DPT, converting roadmap priorities into actionable project plans with clear milestones, owners, and dependencies.
- Co-own quarterly and annual planning with the Principal PM—from ideation through go-to-market—ensuring engineering capacity, vendor timelines, and business priorities are aligned.
- Track and report on product line KPIs defined by the Principal PM (accuracy benchmarks, processing latency, content coverage, downstream adoption) and surface risks or deviations early.
- Partner with the data team on agentic AI enablement—coordinating efforts to surface data models and semantic views to the broader business through AI-powered interfaces, including usage tracking and accuracy assurance.
- Manage delivery cadence for platform infrastructure initiatives including data governance rollouts, real-time streaming capabilities, and pipeline migration efforts—tracking phased delivery across multiple months with clear metrics of success.
AI/ML Program Management
- Lead end-to-end program management for AI pipeline initiatives, including the game film analysis benchmarking program that evaluates vision models (e.g., Gemini Flash, Gemini Pro) against human-tagged ground truth across 28+ annotated fields per play.
- Manage the cadence of model evaluation cycles: coordinating game imports, prompt engineering iterations, accuracy scoring, and cost analysis across multiple AI models.
- Drive vendor integration workstreams—tracking deliverables, SLAs, and roadmap alignment with external computer vision and AI partners alongside the Principal PM.
- Build and maintain project documentation for hybrid human-AI workflows, including escalation paths for ambiguous plays, quality review processes, and fallback handling.
Cross-Team Coordination & Governance
- Facilitate cross-team visibility across product, engineering, data, design, and QA to ensure aligned execution mapping back to PlayOn’s unified product objectives: Engaged Communities, Resilient Services, and New Customer Markets.
- Own dependency mapping, risk management, and blocker resolution for strategic AI initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams.
- Develop and maintain project dashboards, status reports, and executive-level communications that increase transparency of engineering progress to the broader business.
- Provide governance and optimization for Atlassian tools (Jira, Confluence) to ensure standardized workflows, consistent estimation practices, and clear traceability from strategy to execution.
Operational Excellence & AI-Forward Delivery
- Champion operational improvements to planning cycles, stakeholder coordination, cross-org meetings, and feedback loops—creating transparency through standardized tooling and repeatable frameworks.
- Actively incorporate AI tools (e.g., Claude, automation platforms) into your own delivery workflows: automating status reports, synthesizing meeting notes, generating risk analyses, and accelerating documentation.
- Contribute to PlayOn’s broader AI maturity journey by demonstrating AI-augmented delivery practices that can be adopted across the PMO and engineering organization.
To thrive in this role, you have
- 6–8+ years of experience in project or program management within software engineering environments, with a strong grasp of both the product development lifecycle (PDLC) and software development lifecycle (SDLC).
- Demonstrated experience managing technical programs involving AI/ML, data platforms, or similarly complex technical domains—you understand model evaluation, data pipeline architecture, medallion/layered data modeling concepts, and iterative development cycles.
- Working fluency with AI/ML concepts and modern data platforms: you can follow discussions about model accuracy, prompt engineering, token economics, semantic layers, data governance, and human-in-the-loop workflows without needing everything translated.
- Proven ability to partner closely with senior product leaders, translating strategic vision into structured delivery plans and holding cross-functional teams accountable to commitments.
- Strong communication and influencing skills with the ability to engage engineers, ML vendors, and non-technical stakeholders with equal effectiveness.
- Deep familiarity with agile methodologies and experience managing initiatives with multiple teams, external partners, and moving parts.
- Proficiency with Jira, Confluence, and modern project management tooling. Experience establishing governance standards and optimizing workflows across teams.
- An AI-forward personal practice—you already use AI tools to accelerate your own work and can demonstrate how automation improves delivery outcomes.
Preferred
- Experience with computer vision, video processing, or media pipeline programs (encoding, segmentation, metadata extraction).
- Familiarity with vendor management for AI/ML services, including evaluating model performance, negotiating SLAs, and managing integration timelines.
- Background in sports media, sports data, or adjacent domains (prep sports, broadcast, sports tech).
- Exposure to modern data stacks (Snowflake, dbt, Hightouch, Kafka) and event-driven architectures, including familiarity with medallion architecture patterns (Bronze/Silver/Gold).
- Experience with OKRs, KPIs, or strategic planning frameworks in a product-led organization.
- Familiarity with AI coding assistants, agentic workflows, or process automation tools beyond basic prompt usage.
How You Play
Ownership over Participation- You take responsibility for achieving holistic outcomes, prioritize key objectives, and adapt quickly when situations require a different approach. You follow through even against the toughest challenges.
Team over Stars- You are a bridge builder, establishing processes and relationships with teams outside your own. You work to rally around common goals, find win-win solutions, compromise when necessary, and help others succeed.
Growth over Comfort- You are driven by a desire to grow and actively seek opportunities to expand your comfort zone, skills, and confidence. You embrace new challenges with curiosity, accepting discomfort and failure as opportunities to learn.
Fairness over Popularity- You approach decisions with a scientist’s mindset, challenging your assumptions and remaining objective. You consider long-term impact rather than relying on short-term gains, proactively seek others’ perspectives, and manage emotions in decision-making.
PlayOn is where high school sports come to life. Through GoFan, NFHS Network, and MaxPreps, we give every fan a front-row seat to the moments that matter most: the buzzer-beaters, the comeback wins, the senior nights, the rivalries that define a town.
We built our technology for the people who live and breathe high school athletics — the parents who never miss a game, the alumni still cheering from across the country, the communities that show up week after week. From buying tickets to watching a live stream to reliving the highlights, we make it simple to stay close to the sports and the athletes you love most.
Backed by KKR, we build the technology that powers high school athletics from the inside out: Schools trust us to handle ticketing, streaming, fundraising, concessions, merchandise, and more so the people running programs can stay focused on the athletes and fans we all serve together.
We’re a growth-stage company on a mission to make high school sports more accessible, more memorable, and more connected than ever before.
When being there means everything, we make sure you never miss a moment.
Why You’ll Love Working at PlayOn
Product, potential, and people. We’re a leader in the high school event space, constantly evolving our product to meet the needs of administrators. We focus on solving real challenges, learning quickly, and creating impactful solutions.
This is a growth-stage company, meaning your contributions have real impact. You’ll have opportunities to grow your skills, tackle meaningful problems, and make a difference in the lives of schools and the students and fans they serve.
Our culture is built on accountability, collaboration, growth, and fairness. We don’t just show up—we show up for each other. Everyone wears the same jersey, and we play hard, make the extra pass, and cheer one another on. Losses teach us, challenges motivate us, and persistence drives us forward. We value integrity over shortcuts, choosing to do what’s right even when it’s hard. Together, we strive to be better every day—because we know that’s how we win as a team.
The Benefits We Offer
Multiple medical insurance plans to choose from
Dental, vision life and disability insurance
Employee Emergency Fund
Company equity (stock options)
Open PTO policy
401K plan with company match
Hybrid/flexible work environment
Note: Must be a full-time employee to participate in the company’s employee health benefit plan. Part-time employees and interns are not eligible to participate.
