Position OverviewThe Director, Baseball Product Engineering will serve as a senior product strategist and manager within Baseball Operations. The Baseball Product Engineering (BPE) team will be a small group of Forward-Deployed Engineers, operating in tandem with Baseball Systems to define product requirements for existing applications, strategize the development of the new wave of application development facilitated by LLMs, and unify the visual language and design of the flagship technical products (including web applications, reports, development plans, etc.) provided to coaches, players, and decision-makers. This position will lead BPE, carefully devising a strategy for product development in R&D that empowers rapid and accurate decision-making in all corners of the organization. BPE will ultimately ensure that all organizational product development strategically aligns with the data and software platform constructed by Baseball Systems.
Key ResponsibilitiesCollaboration- Collaborate with Application Developers in Baseball Systems to create a product development strategy that empowers existing technical experts within the organization while facilitating rapid iteration with stakeholders
- Collaborate with R&D leaders to build an advantage-seeking product roadmap that funnels traffic to our opinionated, high-quality models and applications, preventing product silos while creating opportunities for the org to better leverage research
- Collaborate with organizational leadership to understand the areas in which rapid product development can drive impact, and optimize for those areas
Product Development- Build a product management framework for the organization, in which product requirements from organizational leadership, analysts, developers, and engineers are coalesced into an optimized product plan
- Generate high-quality Product Requirement Documents that capture stakeholder needs and preferences, illustrate technical challenges, and optimize for organizational impact
- Iterate with stakeholders on new features, ensuring functionality maximizes org impact
- Develop standards and guidance for the creation of single-user or minimal-user vibe-coded applications, and, with the support of Baseball Systems and organizational leadership, enforce those standards
- Provide organizational guidance on the use of AI in all stages of the product engineering processes, while collaborating with R&D leaders to build appropriate guardrails on the use of agentic tooling with proprietary data outside the department
- Identify high leverage R&D outputs that exist outside the auspices of existing data platforms (eg. postgame reports, player development plans) and engineer short-term product solutions for them, and long-term product roadmaps to integrate them into existing data platforms
- Define and support the implementation of the visual design language of the Washington Nationals across all applications, reporting, and strategy materials
Strategy & Management- Oversee a small team of Forward Deployed Engineers who execute on BPE's product, engineering, collaboration, and strategy goals
- Maximize the leverage of internal research by identifying arbitrage opportunities for the org, and subsequently collaborate with R&D and leadership to exploit those edges via product dev
- Partner with other leaders and departments to ensure that research outcomes translate directly into competitive advantages on the field
Technical Qualifications- Product development to support data-driven decision-making
- Modern software development practices, including automated testing, code review, CI/CD, maintainable architecture, and responsible use of AI-assisted development tools
- Data engineering architecture to support research and rapid decision-making
- Application development, product design, and data storytelling
Leadership Qualifications- Demonstrated leadership experience managing technical or interdisciplinary teams
- Deep understanding of evaluation, development, and baseball decision-making
- Excellent communication, project/product management, and interpersonal skills
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative, and highly confidential environment
- Deep alignment with and promotion of the organization's values of joy, humility, integrity and competitiveness and vision to create an organization that becomes the envy of sport.
CompensationThe projected annual salary range for this position is $160,000 - $240,000 per year. Actual pay is based on several factors, including but not limited to the applicant's: qualifications, skills, expertise, education/training, certifications, and other organization requirements. Starting salaries for new employees are frequently not at the top of the applicable salary range.
BenefitsThe Nationals offer a competitive and comprehensive benefits package that presently includes:
- Medical, dental, vision, life and AD&D insurance
- Short- and long-term disability insurance
- Flexible spending accounts
- 401(k) and pension plan
- Access to complimentary tickets to Nationals home games
- Employee discounts
- Free onsite fitness center
