England Men's Insights Senior Data Scientist Job Burton upon Trent area,England UK,IT/Tech

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:

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.
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 Big Query is advantageous), demonstrating proficiency in utilising cloud resources for data analytics and ensuring seamless integration of data…