Research & Development Data Scientist

The Football Association; Burton upon Trent; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical cover funded by The FA

Pension plan

Gen tickets & events

Job summary

The Football Association (The FA) is recruiting a Research & Development Data Scientist to design and build world-class statistical and ML models that provide a competitive edge to England teams. You will develop novel methodologies using event, tracking, GPS, and performance data, and translate findings into actionable insights for stakeholders.

You will work across data science, data engineering, and visualization to deliver robust models and dashboards, with a focus on rigour, documentation,

Qualifications

• Master's degree in a highly quantitative field (maths/statistics/CS).
• Strong grounding in statistics and machine learning methodologies.
• Experience with real-world data to derive actionable insights.
• Proficiency in Python and related data-science tooling.
• Ability to work with football datasets and communicate results to stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement world-leading statistical and machine learning models for football data.
• Develop data-driven insights to support England teams.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering to integrate analytics outputs.
• Create compelling visualisations and deploy them in web apps.
• Ensure model validation and monitoring over time.

Skills

Statistical modeling

Python

Communication

ML/AI concepts

Education

Master's degree in mathematics/statistics/computer science

Tools

Python

Google Cloud Platform

GitHub

Job description

Unite the Game and Inspire the Nation through Winning England Teams

The FA is excited to be recruiting a Research & Development Data Scientist who will play a key role within the Research & Development function of the Insights team. The primary focus of this role is to design and build world-leading statistical and machine learning models that provide a competitive advantage to England teams.

The successful candidate will develop innovative methodologies to model diverse aspects of international football and deliver actionable insights to a wide range of stakeholders. Leveraging their technical expertise, the Research & Development Data Scientist will design, train and validate statistical and machine learning models, working closely with stakeholders to ensure cutting-edge, data-driven insights are effectively communicated and embedded into decision-making.

What will you be doing?

The Research &Development Data Scientist will play a pivotal role in creating and implementing advanced analytical models to provide actionable insights and empower informed decision-making.

Data Science Research:

• Play a leading role in designing and implementing world-leading statistical and machine learning models, drawing insight from football datasets including event data, optical and broadcast tracking data, and GPS/performance data.
• Creatively apply advanced techniques across a range of problems, using the freedom to experiment with many different approaches on long-term projects to provide genuinely novel solutions.
• Research emerging methods across statistics, ML/AI, and adjacent fields to evaluate their applicability to football modelling.
• 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.
• Monitor model performance over time, refining where necessary to ensure continued accuracy and relevance.
• Contribute to a culture of peer review within the team, offering and welcoming constructive feedback to improve the quality and rigour of modelling work.

Data Engineering:

• Work closely with the Senior Data Architect and Development Team to ensure seamless integration of analytics reporting and models.
• Work within our existing cloud infrastructure, writing pipelines where appropriate to allow others in the wider Insights team to access key model outputs.
• Ensure model development and testing is well-documented, with code written to a professional standard.

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 outputs.
• Provide technical guidance and support to stakeholders to enhance their understanding and utilisation of these tools.

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 Master's degree in a highly quantitative field (mathematics/statistics/computer science, etc.). A PhD is desirable but not essential.
• Strong theoretical grounding in statistics and machine learning, with the ability to engage with the methodology behind advanced data science techniques.
• Ability to critically evaluate contemporary academic literature.
• Practical data science experience, using real-world data to provide actionable insights. Experience with football-specific datasets (e.g. event data or tracking data) is strongly desirable but not essential.
• Proficiency in a programming language suited to statistical modelling (Python preferred)
• Ability to be physically present at St. George's Park.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Beneficial to have:

• Evidence of exceptional academic ability (for example, a strong record of achievement from a leading university)
• Experience working within an elite football environment.
• Experience with AI coding agents (e.g. Claude Code, Codex)
• Experience using cloud-based computing environments (Google Cloud Platform is especially advantageous).
• Experience with GitHub for working on collaborative coding projects.
• Experience creating deep-learning models (e.g. GNNs)
• Demonstrable experience collaborating with both technical and non-technical stakeholders on analytics projects.
• Experience developing web applications (React is especially advantageous)

What's in it for you?

We are committed to ensuring everyone can flourish in their roles. To achieve this, we have unique office spaces under the arch of the iconic Wembley National Stadium, which is the home of English Football. We are also delighted to offer a world-class Elite Performance Centre, St. George's Park in Staffordshire, which is an exceptional setting to develop and inspire high-performing England teams and leaders.

We pride ourselves on offering a competitive salary as well as great opportunities to develop and grow in your role. But that is not all; we also have a range of exciting benefits, some of which can be found below:

• Access to event day tickets at Wembley Stadium, alongside a host of regular internal events throughout the season, encourages you to connect and learn with your colleagues and look after your mental health and well-being.
• Free, nutritious lunches at Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park.
• Private medical cover funded by The FA.
• A contributory pension scheme.
• An additional 'Thank You' day's leave, volunteering days, as well as 25 days of annual leave (based on a full-time, permanent contract)
• A hybrid working model offering greater flexibility.

For more information on what it is like to work at The FA, please visit our FA Careers page, https://www.thefa.com/about\-football\-association/careers

Currently, we are working within a hybrid working model whereby the expectation is to work from your contractual location for part of the week, and as and when required by the team. The remaining days can be worked remotely. We will continue to monitor this model, and it may be adjusted in future if deemed necessary. The contractual location of this role can be found on the FA Careers page.

We are a diverse workplace, aspiring to represent football across the country. The Football Association actively promotes inclusion and diversity, encouraging you to be the best version of yourself at work.

We welcome applications from everyone and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. If you have any particular requirements in respect of the recruitment or interview process, please mention this during your application.