Sports Scientist​/Performance Assistant; GSV

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The Golden State Valkyries are looking for a Sports Scientist/Performance Assistant who will collaborate across the full player performance continuum by bridging strength and conditioning, readiness monitoring and advanced analytics. To be successful in this role, you will have extensive experience translating data from multiple sources (athlete load-monitoring platforms, strength and performance diagnostics, athlete-management systems, game analytics) into actionable insights. You will oversee and drive the end-to-end data lifecycle: from data collection, cleaning, processing and modeling to create dynamic dashboards and actionable reports that inform training and rehabilitation teams to make recovery, readiness and return-to-play (RTP) decisions.

You will collaborate with strength and conditioning, medical, and performance to embed evidence-based, scalable decision-making frameworks.

This is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise while learning more about this growing sports and entertainment organization that values your initiative and dedication!

This is full-time position located in Oakland, CA with frequent travel to San Francisco.

• Create, implement and manage the data pipeline for athlete performance monitoring: ingesting data from IMU wearables, athlete management systems (AMS), strength and power diagnostics, force plates, sport technology, rehab/medical metrics and game/practice statistics
• Clean, validate and merge heterogeneous datasets to develop processes and ensure data integrity, timeliness and consistency
• Conduct exploratory and advanced analysis to evaluate athlete-workload relationships, readiness, fatigue/recovery status, injury-risk indicators, return-to-play benchmarks and performance outcomes
• Build, maintain and monitor dynamic dashboards and interactive visualizations via Power BI, Tableau, or custom web apps that deliver meaningful performance insights and training to coaches, performance medical staff and athletes
• Translate quantitative findings into clear, practical recommendations to inform training design, recovery strategies, competition readiness, and player availability decisions
• Lead applied sport-science research and continuous improvement by reviewing emerging literature, validate new monitoring technologies, pilot novel metrics and integrate them into operational frameworks
• Provide leadership to drive culture change toward a data-empowered performance environment and facilitate education and training of staff and ensure data becomes embedded in decision-making
• Maintain professional standards including strict confidentiality of athlete data, ensure ethical use of data, comply with relevant data protection/regulation (e.g., GDPR) and support regular review of processes and tools
• Assist Head of Strength and Conditioning as needed

• Bachelor’s degree in sports science, exercise science physiology, kinesiology, human performance or closely related field
• PhD in applied sport science, human performance, biomechanics, analytics or data science highly preferred
• 3+ years applied experience in a professional or elite sports organization, preferably within basketball (or comparable team sport)
• 7+ years of leadership experience in performance science, analytics or multi-disciplinary integration
• Certification in Strength & Conditioning (e.g., National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) CSCS or equivalent) highly preferred
• Certification in Performance & Sport Science (e.g., NSCA CPSS or equivalent) highly preferred
• Proven proficiency in athlete monitoring systems and technologies (e.g., GPS/IMU platforms, force plates/power diagnostics, wellness platforms) and experience delivering load/ recovery/ readiness monitoring frameworks
• Extensive programming and data-analytics experience and ability to work with coding languages and tools such as Python and/or R, SQL
• Experience with data visualization/dashboard tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Shiny,…