Football Data Scientist

Collingwood Football Club Limited; Melbourne; Presencial; AUD 120 000 - 180 000; Tempo integral

Vantagens oferecidas por esta oferta de emprego

High Performance Gym

Professional development courses

Match-day access

Exclusive partner offers

Community outreach programs

Resumo da oferta

Collingwood Football Club in Melbourne seeks a Football Data Scientist to develop metrics and models measuring performance, opposition profiling, and player development. You will build tools and insights to support coaches, players and staff in decision making.

Reporting to the Head of Football Analysis & Insights, you will balance statistical rigour with practical football questions, collaborating with the Data team to deliver scalable, data-informed decisions across football workflows.

Qualificações

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in a quantitative field such as mathematics, statistics, computer science or data science, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proficiency in a programming language suited to statistical modelling, with Python preferred.
• Strong modelling, ML and analytical technique skills with ability to apply to football problems.
• Experience using modern development tooling and data science workflows.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management and presentation skills.

Responsabilidades

• Design and deliver analytical models, metrics and decision-support tools that directly shape football decisions.
• Balance analytical sophistication with interpretability and simplicity for coaches and staff.
• Lead exploratory research projects investigating team and player performance, opposition profiling and development trends.
• Maintain high standards of statistical rigour and validate findings before communicating to stakeholders.
• Provide match-day analytical support to coaching staff, including real-time feedback; weekend work may be required.
• Collaborate with central Data team to embed models and reporting into reliable, scalable workflows.

Conhecimentos

Statistical modelling

Machine learning

Python

Data science

Communication

Stakeholder management

Football analytics

Formação académica

Bachelor's or Master's in quantitative field

Ferramentas

Git

SQL

Cloud platforms

Jupyter

Descrição da oferta de emprego

Collingwood Football Club (CFC) was founded in 1892.

Local residents, community and business leaders and politicians all hoped that having theirownfootball club could help bring a measure of pride to a downtrodden suburb.

In 2026, CFC is one of the great icons of Australian sport. Our history spans 130 years, 16 premierships and more finals appearances than any other club. Most importantly, Collingwood has grown from being a football club to a sports club with a commitment to our community.

The Opportunity

Collingwood continues to evolve as one of the league’s most innovative football clubs by using data, AI and insight to support players, coaches and staff in their development, preparation and decision-making.

To help realise this ambition, we are seeking a forward-thinkingFootball Data Scientist to develop new ways of measuring, understanding and improving football performance across the Club.

Reporting to the Head of Football Analysis & Insights, this role will advance Collingwood’s analytical capability by building models, metrics and tools that help teams and decision makers understand the game through a data-informed lens. The role will generate football-specific insights across team performance, opposition profiling, competition trends, player development and broader strategic priorities.

Key responsibilities:

The role is expected to combine technical data science capability with strong football curiosity, helping identify the right performance questions, design robust analytical approaches and turn findings into tools that can be embedded in football workflows

Process

• Design and deliver analytical models, metrics and decision-support tools that directly shape football decisions.
• Balance analytical sophistication with interpretability and simplicity, ensuring models and tools are trusted and adopted by the coaches and staff who use them
• Lead exploratory research projectswith a high degree of autonomy, investigating emerging trends in team and player performance, opposition profiling, player development and team preparation.
• Maintain high standards of statistical rigour, ensuring any findings that are communicated to stakeholders have been appropriately validated.
• Provide match-day analytical support to coaching staff and analysts, including real-time feedback and support for relevant game-day technology. Weekend work will be required.
• Continuously explore new datasets, practices and technologies that strengthen Collingwood’s analytical capability and encourage a continuous learning environment.

People

• Work closely with staff to deeply understand football context, translating complex problems into well-defined analytical questions.
• Build and manage strong relationships across the football department, including analysis, coaching, development, recruiting, sports sciences and football executive.
• Collaborate across the football department to embed data-informed insights into existing workflows and decision-making processes.
• Work closely with the centralised Data team to integrate models, new metrics and reporting into reliable, scalable decision-support tools.

Experience/Qualification

Essential experience and qualifications for the role:

• A bachelor’s or master’s degree in a quantitative field such as mathematics, statistics, computer science, data science or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Proficiency in a programming language suited to statistical modelling, with Python preferred.
• Highly skilled in statistical modelling, machine learning and advanced analytical techniques, with the ability to select appropriate methods for practical football problems.
• Experience using AI coding agents and modern development tooling to improve productivity, experimentation and quality of analytical outputs.
• Practical data science experience, using real-world data to provide actionable insights.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management and presentation skills.

Skills and experience which are highly desirable but not essential:

• Experience developing models or metrics in a high-performance sport environment.
• Understanding of AFL concepts, terminology and football workflows, but not essential.
• Experience taking analytical work from prototype through to a model or workflow adopted by end users.
• Demonstrated ability to build credibility and influence with non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with cloud-based data platforms, version control or reproducible analytical workflows.

Football Club’s are fast-paced environments but you will engrin yourself into the Collingwood culture, remain agile, adaptable, and consistently champion our Company values of DO BETTER, SIDE BY SIDE, A NEST FOR ALL and FLY HIGHER.

What we offer

As a valued staff member of our Sporting Club you will be a part of a fun, inclusive and flexible work environment:

• Access to state of art High Performance Gym Facility
• Access to Professional Development and Learning Development Courses
• Access to tickets to all AFL and AFLW matches
• Access to exclusive partner offers, the likes of Nike, Emirates, AIA Vitality, La Trobe, CUB Economy, Business Class with Emirates, TaylorMade and KGM
• Opportunities to support with Collingwood community outreach and volunteer programs (Magpie Nest Cafe)
• Behind the scenes access to Match-Day, including the ability to support in on-ground activations
• Additional 'Seasonal Leave', on top of your usual Annual Leave

We believe in being a Nest For All – we champion respect, diversity and inclusion to make our Club a safe and welcoming place for all. The Collingwood Football Club is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from suitably qualified and diverse candidates. We provide a welcoming, safe and flexible approach to work and provide an environment that benefits from and enables the best from everyone.

As an organisation we are committed to protecting children and young people from harm. It is essential that anyone involved with the Collingwood Football Club understands their responsibility in relation to child safety. Our organization requires all applicants to obtain a ‘Working with Children Check’ prior to appointment.

To learn more about working at Collingwood Football Club and our values, please visit https://www.collingwoodfc.com.au/news/76/careers