Technical Director

The Opportunity:

Are you inspired by developing scalable, innovative technology that powers millions of esports fans worldwide? Do you excel at shaping technical strategies that enable high-performance digital products? If managing engineering initiatives for a global esports organization alongside diverse teams motivates you, this role offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact.

At Team Liquid, our digital product portfolio includes multiple platforms that serve tens of millions of passionate esports fans globally. These products play a central role in the esports ecosystem by linking players, businesses, and communities, fostering industry growth.

The Technical Director role offers the opportunity to guide the evolution of our tech stack, integrate emerging technologies, and ensure system scalability, security, and reliability. You will work closely with technical, commercial, and community teams in a dynamic environment. The ideal candidate will be adept at providing technical leadership and vision, including a view on the future of the tech space and where our tech stack should be, day-to-day tech decision-making, strategic database and server planning, and ensuring scalability.

Are you ready to contribute to our ever-growing product suite by bringing your world-class technical excellence?

About Team Liquid’s Key Products

• Team Liquid’s tech product portfolio contains four key products: the Liquipedia website, the Liquipedia app, the Liquipedia Database with commercial API, and the Fanhub (Team Liquid's main website, including a custom-built fan loyalty solution).
• Boasting a diverse range of products that can service B2B and B2C demographics within the esports industry, Team Liquid’s tech products are positioned uniquely to support the esports industry as it continues to grow.
• Liquipedia Web
  • Origin Story
    • Run and edited entirely by staff, in 2009, Liquipedia transitioned to a publicly editable wiki, allowing volunteer contributors to provide content. Liquipedia evolved into its current state as the most reliable esports wiki online. We have a higher reliability rating than the BBC!
    • Years of volunteer contributors ensured a wealth of resources for Liquipedia’s massive collection of information. Content grew from strategy-informed topics into esports at large. New game wikis were formed, and StarCraft: Brood War was joined by StarCraft 2, Dota 2, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. Now, over 60 games and esports are covered by Liquipedia and powered by our international community around the clock.
    • Liquipedia Web is a 15-year permanent fixture in esports, serving fans, businesses, and players alike, whether they’re catching live tournaments or exploring esports history. As it grows, LP Web expands into new esports territories, improves the reliability and accuracy of the data delivered to its clients, and explores initiatives that span outside the world.
• Liquipedia App
  • The Liquipedia App helps esports fans explore the esports world their way, ensuring they never miss historic moments. Optimized for mobile, it offers a user-friendly experience with push notifications when matches start, favorites, and personalization for easy on-the-go access.
• Liquipedia Database
  • The Liquipedia Database is the integrating factor between all Liquipedia products. It houses data from Liquipedia Web and App, as well as 3rd party APIs. As such, it is the most comprehensive esports database to date.
• Fanhub
  • The Fanhub is the home base for all Team Liquid fans. Loaded not only with the latest updates on all things Team Liquid, but also hosting fan engagement programs, it is the one place we send our TL fans to. A key example of a fan engagement program is the renowned MyBlue program, which allows you to create your own version of Blue, the Team Liquid mascot, sporting various attainable pieces of equipment.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Technical Strategy & Vision:
  • Develop, articulate, and execute a clear and compelling technical vision and long-term engineering strategy that aligns with the product roadmap and overall business goals.
  • Oversee the architectural design and selection-making for all products, ensuring solutions are scalable, robust, and maintainable.
  • Drive technical innovation by evaluating and integrating emerging technologies, such as blockchain solutions and AI-informed prediction models, through in-house development and third-party partnerships.
  • Play a key advisory role in M&A activities, performing technical due diligence and assessing the viability of acquiring new tools, wikis, and platforms that align with the esports and gaming space.
  • Identify opportunities to productize components of existing Team Liquid applications and potential acquisitions, and establish the technical requirements to do so.
• Team Guidance & Management:
  • Oversee, mentor, and develop team members, fostering a culture of excellence, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
  • Indirectly oversee a total of 15 engineers, providing guidance and assistance to ensure high team performance and engagement.
  • Coordinate teams of specialists in Systems Engineering, Developer Operations (DevOps), and Quality Assurance (QA), facilitating their work to assist all product engineering teams effectively.
  • Continuously evaluate and reorganize the engineering team and technical landscape to effectively assist new strategic initiatives and business priorities.
  • Establish and maintain a clear career development framework for engineers, defining skills and expectations for different engineering roles.
  • Oversee a performance assessment process that is tied to this framework, helping engineers identify and pursue growth opportunities and expand their skill sets.
  • Oversee the recruitment, onboarding, and professional development of the engineering team members.
  • Promote and improve engineering processes and frameworks to optimize team performance and product delivery.
• Engineering Excellence & Execution:
  • Establish and uphold a high bar for engineering quality across the department.
  • Create, implement, and maintain a comprehensive engineering strategy focusing on key pillars: architecture, productivity, predictability, quality, security, developer experience, CI/CD, deployment, and data & privacy.
  • Identify and spearhead improvements across all engineering efforts, from development workflows to deployment pipelines.
  • Ensure the technical feasibility of product requirements and work with the team to translate them into robust technical designs.
  • Handle and prioritize requests from within Team Liquid to build and maintain internal applications and tools (from streaming add-ons to esports simulations for our athletes)!
• Stakeholder Partnership & Communication:
  • Work closely with the Product Director and Community Director to ensure tight alignment between product goals and technical execution.
  • Act as the primary technical voice, effectively communicating complex technical concepts, strategies, and trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Foster strong relationships with internal teams and external technology partners to ensure seamless integration and project success.

What You’ll Need:

• Proven experience in a senior engineering role such as Technical Director or Head of Engineering, ideally within media, technology, gaming, or online community sectors.
• Demonstrated success developing and implementing technical strategies that enable scalable, high-performance digital products.
• Experience conducting technical due diligence and providing input on M&A opportunities.
• Strong background in mentoring technical staff and fostering their growth.
• Deep familiarity with the software development lifecycle, agile methodologies, and modern engineering practices.
• Expertise in systems architecture, cloud infrastructure, and scalable backend and frontend technologies.
• Strong data-informed and problem-solving skills with a data-informed and practical approach to selection-making.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to engage and align a range of stakeholders.
• Experience managing engineering for products with a large, global user base.

You’ll Earn Bonus Points If You Have:

• Genuine interest in gaining deeper insights into gaming, esports, and online communities.
• Experience with M&A in the tech space.
• Experience or familiarity with emerging technologies like blockchain and AI/machine learning.