Research Engineer Football · Sobha Realty Training Centre

The Role

We are looking for a Research Engineer to join our Data Analytics team, embedded directly with the Men’s First Team Analysis department, and play a key role in working with Analytics and Analysis colleagues to plan, implement, and deploy end-to-end internal products supporting the Men’s First Team.

In this exciting role, you'll be entrusted to work directly with a variety of colleagues across our club, such as Analysts and Coaching staff, on building data-driven applications and tooling for football analysis, driving the adoption of proprietary, state-of-the-art technology in coaching and analysis workflows, and identifying opportunities for furthering our applied research capabilities.

The role is accountable directly to the Head of Software & Analytics and Men’s First Team Head of Analysis to gather requirements from stakeholders at Sobha Realty Training Centre and collaborate with colleagues within the department to ensure appropriate prioritisation and delivery of relevant applications and tooling

We are one of the most famous clubs in world football, with a rich heritage and history of success – read more about our history, here.

Beyond that, we are passionate about our local community and, behind the scenes, we have a wide variety of opportunities and career paths for all. We have a very defined purpose: to act for a winning team, culture and community. We achieve this by ensuring we are courageous in the pursuit of progress, we champion our community and each other, and that we do the right thing (even when no one is looking).

We are committed to ensuring that our environments for children, young people and adults at risk remain safe and inclusive. We therefore require successful candidates to complete a DBS check and other essential background checks prior to starting their employment. Depending on the responsibilities of the role, a DBS will be either a basic, standard, or enhanced check.

• Design and develop full-stack applications - you will collaborate with colleagues to design, develop, and maintain full-stack data-driven applications tailored for use by our club stakeholders, ensuring solutions are efficient, reliable, and scalable
• Streamline critical processes - you'll help automate and streamline select football analysis tasks and processes using a combination of full-stack software engineering and applied ML
• Collaborate with our Football Analysis department - you will work closely with Football Analysts to deeply understand their processes and proactively plan and implement technical solutions to augment, refine and improve those processes
• Act as an applied AI specialist - you'll be a subject matter expert in the application of AI techniques in football analysis, driving and contributing to projects that sit at the intersection of the two domains
• Maximise the impact of our applied research - you will be integral in helping us to maximise the impact of our applied research work by ensuring it is (a) grounded in concrete coaching/analysis needs, and (b) accounts for real-world football analysis constraints

• Proven quantitative background - you hold an advanced qualification in a quantitative discipline (e.g., computer science, data science, mathematics, statistics, data visualisation), or a related field with proven expertise in building technical, data-driven solutions
• Solid foundation in software engineering and machine learning principles - you've got the ability to reason from first principles about research ideas and engineering trade-offs, and you have a willingness to build working full-stack applications
• Eye for design - you have the ability to design and critique the presentation of data-driven insights and interfaces
• Engineering mindset - you have a track record of designing and developing scalable data-driven applications
• Experience with key programming languages - you're well-versed in using Python, SQL, and JavaScript/Type Script
• PyData tech stack fluency - you are comfortable with numpy, Pandas/Polars, matplotlib/seaborn/Altair, and similar tooling
• Excellent communicator - you communicate…