Technical Advisor

Summary

Join PENN Entertainment's digital team as a Technical Advisor to the CTO, a newly created role reporting directly to the CTO. You will be the first and only Technical Advisor, serving as a trusted partner and strategic extension of the CTO. This high-impact role involves generating research, synthesizing insights, prototyping, driving initiatives across the organization, and helping multiple teams achieve common goals. The position requires close collaboration with leaders in Engineering, Product, Design, and Strategy. You will need to have a strong senior presence, communicate effectively, and foster a positive work culture. This role offers the opportunity to shape the future of PENN Entertainment's technology and products.

Requirements

• Demonstrated expertise in research, engineering and product development
• Acknowledged as a deep expert in technical domains with a reputation as a credible thought leader
• 15+ years of Software Engineering experience is required
• Experience building consumer facing platforms, using bleeding-edge technologies
• Experience working closely with executive leaders
• Proven ability to navigate large organizations and to influence/inspire peers in engineering and product development
• Works through high levels of ambiguity and drives clarity to senior leadership
• Thorough understanding of cloud computing, cloud data center design, and distributed solution needs in high scale scenarios
• Demonstrated ability to work through biases and preconceived notions through systemic, disciplined research and investigations
• Able to pursue breakthrough thinking by assessing established and emerging thought leadership
• Able to build bridges and assist the CTO with developing relationships with external industry and academic thought leaders; develop and maintain own relationships
• Strong communication style that conveys expertise, clarity, and confidence

Responsibilities

• Conduct research to synthesize key opportunities, issues, and progress to date
• Generate briefs that synthesize shared and divergent points of view and positions
• Drive projects that require collaboration from multiple teams across the Interactive division while sharing a common strategic vision
• Help teams evolve their understanding of a new Penn Interactive culture of engineering, in partnership with engineering leadership
• Produce reading material for the CTO and executive leaders with summations, highlighted focus areas for deep processing, and prioritized order of consuming these reading materials
• The reading will include the synthesis of a broad range of materials (academic research, business media & consultancies reports, white papers of internal teams, etc.)
• Engage with CTO on iterative investigations and prototyping as needed
• Drill down into technical areas based on the CTO’s request and personal sense of company priorities/market trends
• Create and maintain iterative mini-brainstorms to ensure alignment with CTO thought leadership and just-in-time fluidity of investigation efforts
• Produce a range of recommendations to the CTO based on research
• Those may range from vision to individual solutions, depending on the topic, scope, and complexity

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven customer facing experience - Startup experience considered an asset
• Track record of speaking externally is considered an asset
• Master's or PhD in Computer Science or related Engineering fields is preferred

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package
• Fun, relaxed work environment
• Education and conference reimbursements
• Parental leave top-up
• Opportunities for career progression and mentoring others
• Specific benefits—such as day-one medical coverage, 401(k) matching, annual performance bonus and equity package — depending on position
• Paid time off is earned according to the local policy and increases with the length of employment