Director of Football Data

Manchester City FC; Manchester; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a highly skilled Director of Football Data to lead data science initiatives in football operations. This role is pivotal in driving the strategic direction for data, ensuring alignment with broader objectives. You'll develop innovative data solutions that enhance talent identification and player performance. With a focus on leadership and collaboration, you'll manage a talented team, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. If you're passionate about leveraging data to influence football decisions, this opportunity offers a chance to make a significant impact in a dynamic environment.

Benefits

26 days annual leave

Additional day off for birthday

Private healthcare

Annual discretionary bonus

Lifestyle discounts

Qualifications

• Experienced senior professional in data science with strategic impact.
• Degree in a quantitative field or equivalent experience in data-intensive roles.

Responsibilities

• Drive strategic data initiatives for talent identification and player performance.
• Lead a high-performing data science team fostering innovation and learning.

Skills

Data Science

Artificial Intelligence

Machine Learning

Statistical Modelling

Data Engineering

Leadership

Education

Degree in Computer Science

Postgraduate Qualification (MSc/PhD)

Tools

Python

R

SQL

Job description

Location:Manchester, GB

Opening Date:2 May 2025

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Full Time / Part Time:Full Time

Contract Type:Permanent

Our Story

Established in 2013, City Football Group is the world’s leading private owner and operator of football clubs, with total or partial ownership of twelve clubs across the world. City Football Group also invests in other football related businesses and serves as a global commercial platform for our partners, whilst fulfilling our purpose of empowering better lives through football on a local and global scale, consistent with what “City” football has meant to people for over a century.

Our Winning Team

Our purpose is to empower better lives through football. We are proud of the role City Football Group clubs play in their localities, delivering positive economic, social and environmental impact through our operations and through programmes and activities that bring about meaningful, lasting change.

We are seeking a highly skilled Director of Football Data to drive the strategic direction for data science initiatives across football operations, ensuring alignment with the broader Group Football Operations objectives.

This is the principal role in driving City Football Group towards continually being the industry-leading organisation for the application of innovative data science solutions in the areas of Football Performance & Talent through:

• Developing strategically important data science initiatives that result in the delivery and implementation of actionable insights for the betterment of talent identification, player trading, player development and team performance.
• Strategically guiding fundamental engineering processes that moves CFG towards the most comprehensive and empowering football data set in the world.
• Embedding data-informed systems and processes related to Talent Identification & Talent Evaluation to enable key stakeholders to make more effective & efficient decisions in the transfer market.
• Leading the Football Data team in creating & delivering data-informed systems & processes that enable proactive interventions related to team and player performance across CFG clubs.
• Providing effective leadership in analytics engineering & data science which positively influences the actions of a variety of stakeholders levels
• Leading data science research and modelling, including the introduction of new and innovative approaches to solving existing problems.
• Management of a highly skilled team of data scientists and data engineers through the provision of a positive work environment by coaching and empowering them to drive CFG towards strategic objectives.

This is Your City

As part of our team, you will be entitled to 26 days annual leave plus an additional day off for your birthday, private healthcare and a simply health cash plan, an annual discretionary bonus, plus a huge range of partnership and lifestyle discounts.

Your Impact

1. Act as a senior voice within key football decision-making forums (e.g., player & coach recruitment, performance reviews, long-term planning), ensuring data-driven insights are consistently integrated into strategic and operational decisions.

2. Lead the advancement of CFG’s data science & artificial intelligence capabilities through:

• Research & testing of innovative and novel applications of emerging data science methods applied to our strategic performance challenges
• In-house developments in collaboration with stakeholders from Technology & Football
• Smart, strategic collaborations with third parties

1. Manage and mentor a high-performing data science team, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning. Ensure the team stays at the forefront of best practices in football analytics.

2. Strategically guide the continued development of data models and analytics engineering best practice to:

• Curate and evolve a unified dataset that powers CFG’s Digital Twins enabling holistic, effective & efficient analysis of teams, players and non-playing staff.
• Onboard new and novel, structured and unstructured, complex data from third parties that enable’s Group Football Operations to answer previously unanswerable performance questions.
• Deliver transformed, quality controlled & optimized data-sets that enables self-serve analytics across the organisation.

1. Build trust and understanding of data science across key stakeholders by tailoring communication, visualisation, and interpretation of insights to the football context — championing a culture where data is a critical input in every major footballing decision.

2. Lead the Football Data team to continually develop innovative data science solutions that will be embedded at the heart of our Talent, Performance & Coaching processes:

• Talent Identification – implementing data-informed processes and building data-driven longlists & shortlists whom align to the club brief
• Talent Evaluation - Robust, brief-specific profiling, comparison and recommendation of shortlisted players.
• Recruitment – Optimisation of transfer and contract negotiation.
• Development – Ensuring optimised pathway decisions for players through growth & value projections, suitability analysis and opportunity insights.

What we are looking for

Essential

• Experienced senior professional in data science, with a track record of delivering strategic impact in an elite environment.
• Degree in a quantitative field (e.g. computer science, engineering, statistics, mathematics); or equivalent experience in data-intensive leadership roles.
• Proven ability to define and lead large-scale, strategic data initiatives aligned to business or sporting objectives.
• Strong leadership track record, showing the ability to manage, mentor, and inspire a diverse technical team while fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to balance near-term delivery with long-term capability development.
• High-level experience communicating complex data science outputs in sporting environments - including visualisation, storytelling and tailoring insights to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Expertise in Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, statistical modelling, and data engineering with hands-on experience in modern languages and tools.
• Demonstrated ability to embed data solutions, driving adoption and measurable impact.
• Experienced in managing collaborative R&D across in-house teams and external partners to explore cutting-edge data science methods & approaches.
• Understanding of the football landscape, including player and coach recruitment, performance analysis, and sports science.

Desirable

• Postgraduate qualification (MSc/PhD) in a quantitative field or significant applied research experience.
• Prior experience leading data science initiatives specifically in professional sport/ football

City Football Group promotes equal opportunities in employment and we positively welcome applications from all candidates regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

We will screen all applicants and select candidates whose skills and experience seem to meet our needs. We will carefully consider your application during the initial screening and will contact you only if you are selected for an interview.

Employment is subject to the provision of proof of eligibility to work in the UK.

Due to our safeguarding promise, all UK based CFG roles will be subject to a DBS check upon commencing employment with us. This will be either a basic, standard or enhanced check depending on the job role and responsibilities.

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