What are the responsibilities and job description for the Automation Engineer position at Florida Panthers?
Organization Overview:
The Florida Panthers enter their 33rd season in 2026-27 as one of the National Hockey League’s premier franchises. As back-to-back Stanley Cup champions in 2024 and 2025, the Cats have emerged victorious in 11 of their past 12 postseason series and have captured four Eastern Conference championships. The Panthers are led by President of Hockey Operations & General Manager Bill Zito entering his seventh season, and President of Business Operations Michael White who begins his first full season.
As the NHL’s southernmost team, the Panthers operate four facilities in Broward County, Florida: Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise; the Panthers IceDen in Coral Springs; the state-of-the-art Baptist Health IcePlex in Fort Lauderdale; and the renovated War Memorial Auditorium, which hosts concerts and events for the South Florida faithful year-round.
An organization with deep roots in the community, the Panthers are owned by Vincent J. Viola, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a veteran of the U.S. Army. Emphasizing a culture of selfless service both on and off the ice, the Panthers pillar program, “Heroes Among Us,” honors a United States military veteran at every game. The Florida Panthers Foundation focuses on four core pillars: veterans’ affairs; children’s health and education; raising awareness for the endangered Florida Panther; and growing youth hockey throughout the region. The Panthers remain committed to empowering our fans to live sustainably and to strengthen the resiliency of our diverse communities throughout Florida and the tri-county area.
Job Title: Automation Engineer
Department: Panther Insights
Reports To: Director, Business Intelligence
FLSA: Exempt
Employment Type: Full-Time On-Site
Location: Florida Panthers Hockey Club
Position Overview
We are seeking an Automation Engineer with 1–3 years of experience to partner with departments across the Florida Panthers organization — from Marketing and Ticket Sales to Corporate Partnerships, Finance, Retail, and Venue Operations — to identify high-value automation opportunities and ship the tools that capture them. Operating 100% on-site at our Sunrise offices, this role combines backend engineering with stakeholder-facing work; you will spend meaningful time understanding how the business actually operates and translate that knowledge into Python-based scripts, integrations, and AI agent tools that eliminate manual effort. While we value process-improvement or business-systems experience, we are primarily looking for a hands-on builder with elite Python skills who is excited to write code that has direct, visible impact on a championship organization.
Key Responsibilities
- Partner with internal departments to shadow workflows, identify pain points, and scope automation opportunities that translate manual effort into measurable time savings.
- Design and build Python-based automation scripts, integrations, and agent tools that connect internal systems via APIs and webhooks.
- Contribute to our internal AI agent platform by building agents that automate repetitive, template-based, or judgment-light work across departments.
- Document existing workflows clearly and produce simple analyses to support build-vs-buy and prioritization decisions.
- Contribute small interface features to internal applications when an automation requires a user-facing component.
- Present findings, demos, and recommendations to non-technical stakeholders, translating technical work into a clear commercial narrative.
- Collaborate closely with the Platform Engineer and Product Engineer on shared infrastructure, interfaces, and integration points.
Qualifications
Required:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Analytics, Business Analytics, or a related field.
- 1–3 years of experience in software engineering, business systems, process automation, or a similar hands-on technical role.
- Solid proficiency in Python, with a focus on writing maintainable, production-ready automations and integrations.
- Demonstrated experience working with REST APIs, webhooks, and integrating disparate business systems.
- Comfort writing SQL to extract and validate data from relational databases.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication; proven ability to explain technical work clearly to non-technical audiences.
- Ability to work full-time, on-site at our Sunrise, FL offices. This role is based 100% in-person to support close collaboration with the broader BI team and cross-functional stakeholders.
Preferred:
- Experience automating workflows across business systems used in CRM, marketing, finance, or operations.
- Familiarity with cloud-based infrastructure within the AWS ecosystem (S3, Lambda, etc.) and workflow orchestration tools (e.g., Prefect).
- Exposure to LLM applications, prompt engineering, or AI agent frameworks.
- Experience producing simple business analyses or process documentation alongside automation work.
- A passion for sports analytics or previous experience within the sports and entertainment industry.
Team & Environment
You will join a lean, fast-moving Data Science team where creativity and speed are essential. We operate in a championship-winning environment that is structured yet agile; you will often be given open-ended business problems that require you to be both the architect and the builder of the solution. We are looking for a teammate who is eager to apply technical craft to the exciting world of professional sports.
Position Type/Expected Hours of Work:
This position is on-site in our Sunrise, FL offices (no remote work is available). This is an exempt salaried position. Must be able to work flexible hours including nights, weekend, and occassional holidays.
At the Florida Panthers Hockey Club, Arena Operating Company, Panthers IceDen, Sanza Food Service, War Memorial Benefit Corporation, and FLA Team Shop, we strive to make every employee feel valued and respected for who they are and the unique contributions they make. We believe that a diverse and inclusive company is a more innovative and successful company, which is why we aim to infuse diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) into all aspects of our culture and our business.
We welcome all to apply and join our team.
We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.