Director, IT Business System

Who We Are

TKO Group Holdings, Inc.

(NYSE

TKO) is a premium sports and entertainment company. TKO owns iconic properties including UFC, the world’s premier mixed martial arts organization; WWE, the global leader in sports entertainment; and PBR, the world’s premier bull riding organization. Together, these properties reach 1 billion households across 210 countries and territories and organize more than 500 live events year-round, attracting more than three million fans. TKO also services and partners with major sports rights holders through IMG, an industry-leading global sports marketing agency; and On Location, a global leader in premium experiential hospitality.

Reports to

VP, Business Systems & Sports IT Business Partner

The Director of Business Systems owns the technology strategy, delivery, and operations for the business systems supporting TKO’s sports brands. Partnering with senior stakeholders across the business, the Director sets the direction for how technology enables sports operations, translating enterprise priorities into a coherent application strategy and portfolio roadmap. This role leads internal and external delivery partners, holding accountability not just for individual applications but for the health, performance, and evolution of the entire portfolio — from strategy and demand planning through delivery, operations, compliance, and continuous improvement.

Given the nature of TKO’s sports and live events businesses, the role operates in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment where event calendars, production cycles, and broadcast windows are non-negotiable. The successful candidate will demonstrate executive presence and composure under pressure, the ability to influence and align senior stakeholders, and the interpersonal awareness required to engage effectively across talent relations, global partnerships, sales & marketing, and live events. The Director balances strategic leadership with the operational rigor to ensure the portfolio runs reliably and securely.

Key Responsibilities

• Senior stakeholder partner and advisor serving as the trusted technology advisor to senior business leaders across the sports brands — communicating strategy, roadmap, tradeoffs, and outcomes to business leadership, and translating between business and technology.
• Portfolio strategy and roadmap owner responsible for setting the multi-year technology strategy and roadmap for the Sport Business Systems portfolio, aligning it to enterprise and brand priorities, partnering with the VP and senior business leaders to shape demand.
• Budget and financial owner owning the portfolio budget end-to-end — building and managing the annual operating and project budgets, forecasting and tracking spend, and making the build-versus-buy and investment decisions that maximize value across the portfolio.
• Vendor strategy and contract executive owning the strategic relationships with third-party application vendors and implementation partners, and partnering with Procurement, Legal, and Finance on negotiations, due diligence, renewals, and spend optimization.
• Delivery and program owner accountable for the successful delivery of projects and programs across the portfolio — establishing delivery standards and governance, overseeing project and program managers, and ensuring initiatives land on time, on budget, and to the quality bar the business requires.
• Operations and service owner accountable for the reliability, performance, and support of all applications in the portfolio — establishing the operating model and support processes, owning escalation for major incidents and outages, and driving service-quality and stability improvements across the estate.
• Governance, risk, and compliance owner owning the portfolio’s risk and compliance posture — partnering with Cyber Security on risk remediation and with IT Audit on SOX compliance and audit evidence, ensuring access governance and segregation-of-duties controls are designed and enforced, and representing the portfolio in governance and audit forums.
• Process and data quality leader championing current- and future-state process design across the portfolio, driving simplification of business and technical workflows, and establishing the standards and practices that keep data quality high across the applications.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in business systems, application management, or IT delivery roles owning enterprise business systems end-to-end — including strategy, requirements, delivery, application operations, and vendor partnership — with several years at a manager level or above.
• Proven people-leadership experience leading teams that include other managers and/or directing vendor and offshore organizations, with a demonstrated ability to set strategy, develop leaders, build organizational capability, and hold a team accountable to delivery and service commitments.
• Demonstrated ownership of portfolio strategy and roadmap — intaking and prioritizing demand across multiple stakeholders, making investment tradeoffs against capacity and budget, and communicating direction to senior leadership.
• Experience owning a technology budget end-to-end, including annual planning, forecasting, spend management, and build-versus-buy investment decisions.
• Demonstrated experience setting vendor and sourcing strategy and governing vendor relationships at scale — master agreements, SOW definition and oversight, service-level management, and partnering with Procurement and Legal on negotiations, due diligence, and renewals.
• Track record of successful project and program delivery using waterfall, agile, or hybrid methodologies, including establishing delivery governance and overseeing project or program managers.
• Strong understanding of SDLC, quality assurance, system integration, and application operations best practices.
• Experience partnering with Cyber Security and IT Audit on access governance, risk remediation, segregation of duties, and SOX evidence is a strong plus.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with executive presence and the ability to influence senior stakeholders.
• Experience implementing AI agents or other solutions to optimize business and system workflows is strongly preferred
• Experience in the media, sports, entertainment, or live events industry is strongly preferred
• PMP, Certified Scrum Master, or equivalent leadership or delivery certification is preferred

Travel

• Occasional travel is required for onsite event support, projects, leadership offsites, workshops, and training/conferences.

TKO EEO Statement

TKO is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws regarding non-discrimination in employment. TKO makes employment decisions based on merit and qualifications, without considering an employee’s or applicant’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any other basis prohibited under federal, state or local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the Company has facilities. TKO also provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and applicable state or local laws. For information about Privacy and Information Security for TKO employment candidates, please review our Privacy Policy. For information regarding Terms of Use for this and other TKO websites, please review our Terms of Use.