The Football Association
England Men's Insights Senior Data Scientist
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Unite the Game and Inspire the Nation through Winning England Teams
The FA is excited to be recruiting an England Men's Insights Senior Data Scientist who will play a key role within the Insights department, driving evidence-based insights across multiple performance functions.
The successful candidate will develop and implement advanced analytical models and data-driven applications to generate actionable insights that support player selection, development and performance outcomes. Leveraging their expertise in data science, they will design, train and optimise models, working closely with a range of stakeholders to ensure cutting-edge insights are effectively communicated, understood and embedded into decision-making processes.
What will you be doing?
The England Men's Insights Senior Data Scientist will play a pivotal role in creating and implementing advanced analytical models & tools to provide actionable insights and empower informed decision-making.
Data Science Skillset:
- Work closely with technical staff to deeply understand the football context, translating complex problems into well-defined analytical questions.
- Design and deliver analytical products that directly shape football decisions.
- Support our R&D team in the design and implementation of world-leading statistical and machine learning models, drawing insight from football datasets including event data, optical and broadcast tracking data, and GPS/performance data.
- Effectively utilise AI coding agents and tooling to accelerate the speed of development.
- Maintain high standards of statistical rigour, ensuring any findings that are communicated to stakeholders have been appropriately validated.
- Provide technical guidance and support to stakeholders to enhance their understanding and utilisation of data science tools.
- Work closely with the Senior Data Architect and Development Team to ensure seamless integration of analytics reporting and models.
Data Wrangling, EDA & Feature Engineering:
- Ensure the quality of data used for model development through meticulous data checking and cleaning practices.
- Process and transform raw, unstructured data into usable formats for model training and analysis.
- Develop and refine features from raw data to enhance the performance of predictive models.
Data Visualisation:
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- Collaborate with key stakeholders to translate complex model outputs into actionable insights through impactful data visualisations.
- Add to our existing web apps to deploy these visualisations and allow stakeholders to explore model & analysis outputs.
Other:
- Executes additional tasks as required to meet the FA's changing priorities.
- Comply with all company policies and procedures to ensure the highest standards of health, safety, and well-being can be maintained.
- As part of the FA's commitment to ensuring a safe environment for everyone in football, every employee will be required to complete a DBS check. The level of the check required will be based on the activity of the specific job role and in line with legislation and government guidance.
What are we looking for?
Essential for the role:
- A bachelor's or master's degree in a quantitative field (mathematics, statistics, computer/data science, etc.) or in sports science, sport management or a related field with demonstrable data science experience.
- Experience in the fundamentals of data science, including but not limited to:
- Data visualisation
- Exploratory Data Analysis
- Data Wrangling
- Feature Engineering
- Model Selection/Training/Tuning
- Experience in utilising data to drive insights related to football-specific questions.
- Highly skilled in advanced statistical and modelling techniques.
- Experience with football-specific datasets, including but not limited to: event data, optical tracking data, broadcast tracking data, GPS data.
- Experience managing complex uncleaned datasets.
- Advanced proficiency in statistical programming languages, especially Python and/or R, for data analysis.
- Experience using cloud-based computing environments (Google Cloud Platform / Google BigQuery is advantageous), demonstrating proficiency in utilising cloud resources for data analytics and ensuring seamless integration of data pipelines and analytics platforms.
- Demonstrable experience collaborating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders on analytics projects.
- Ability to be physically present at St. George's Park.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Beneficial to have:
- Experience in a similar role in a professional football environment.
- Experience with Time-Series Analysis & Forecasting.
- Experience with Bayesian inference/MCMC.
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What's in it for you?
We are committed to ensuring everyone can flourish in their roles. To achieve this, we have unique office spaces under the arch of the iconic Wembley National Stadium, which is the home of English Football. We are also delighted to offer a world-class Elite Performance Centre, St. George's Park in Staffordshire, which is an exceptional setting to develop and inspire high-performing England teams and leaders.
We pride ourselves on offering a competitive salary as well as great opportunities to develop and grow in your role. But that is not all; we also have a range of exciting benefits, some of which can be found below:
- Access to event day tickets at Wembley Stadium, alongside a host of regular internal events throughout the season, encourages you to connect and learn with your colleagues and look after your mental health and well-being.
- Free, nutritious lunches at Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park.
- Private medical cover funded by The FA.
- A contributory pension scheme.
- An additional 'Thank You' day's leave, volunteering days, as well as 25 days of annual leave (based on a full-time, permanent contract)
- A hybrid working model offering greater flexibility.
For more information on what it is like to work at The FA, please visit our FA Careers page, https://www.thefa.com/about-football-association/careers
Currently, we are working within a hybrid working model whereby the expectation is to work from your contractual location for part of the week, and as and when required by the team. The remaining days can be worked remotely. We will continue to monitor this model, and it may be adjusted in future if deemed necessary. The contractual location of this role can be found on the FA Careers page.
We are a diverse workplace, aspiring to represent football across the country. The Football Association actively promotes inclusion and diversity, encouraging you to be the best version of yourself at work.
We welcome applications from everyone and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. If you have any particular requirements in respect of the recruitment or interview process, please mention this during your application.
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