Scaling a Sports Analytics Startup to Global Acquisition

Led a strategic technical transformation that enabled a high-growth startup to scale, culminating in acquisition by FIFA.

Challenge

Severe performance bottlenecks threatened the scalability of a rapidly growing sports analytics platform, impacting customer retention and operational costs.

Solution

Drove a company-wide initiative to optimize mission-critical functionality, modernize infrastructure, and implement scalable best practices.

Impact

Reduced execution time from 17 hours to 6 seconds, saved $50K/month in AWS costs, and positioned the company for global expansion and acquisition.

SQL Server .NET Redis AWS RDS CI/CD

Project Overview

I led the transformation of a high-growth sports analytics startup struggling with scalability issues. Performance bottlenecks in their flagship analytics platform were crippling user experience, straining infrastructure, and preventing further growth.

With customer demand surging and AWS costs escalating, the company faced a critical inflection point: either scale effectively or stagnate. My role was to architect a long-term solution that ensured performance, cost-efficiency, and global scalability. This enabled the company’s rapid expansion and ultimate acquisition by FIFA.

Key Achievements

  • Reduced execution time from 17 hours to 6 seconds, enabling real-time analytics and improving customer retention.
  • Saved $50K+ per month in AWS costs by replacing an oversized SQL Server VM with AWS RDS for SQL Server.
  • Positioned the company for global expansion, supporting millions of real-time queries and facilitating FIFA acquisition.
  • Standardized performance and scalability best practices, embedding monitoring, CI/CD, and proactive optimizations into the engineering culture.

Technical Execution

  • Refactored SQL queries, eliminating inefficient cartesian joins, optimizing indexing strategies, and restructuring stored procedures.
  • Introduced Redis caching, reducing redundant queries and improving database throughput.
  • Replaced a single, expensive AWS EC2 instance running SQL Server with a fully managed AWS RDS deployment, improving scalability and reducing costs.
  • Eliminated application-level database timeouts, reducing redundant queries and preventing excessive server load.
  • Implemented CI/CD pipelines to automate performance regression testing, ensuring long-term system efficiency.
  • Developed real-time monitoring dashboards for query performance and system health, allowing engineers to proactively optimize underperforming queries.

Leadership & Strategy

  • Led a cross-functional engineering initiative, aligning technical investments with business growth objectives.
  • Collaborated with product managers and business leadership, ensuring performance improvements supported user engagement and retention.
  • Standardized scalability best practices, embedding real-time monitoring, automated performance testing, and cost-optimization strategies into the engineering culture.
  • Established a culture of proactive performance management, ensuring the company maintained efficiency while scaling globally.