Rugby AI & Talent Intelligence Lead

Welsh Rugby Union Group; Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension plan

Life assurance

Ticket allocation

Birthday leave

Employee assistance programme

Hybrid working

Stadium parking

Store discounts

Bike to work

Eye care voucher

Job summary

Welsh Rugby Union Group is seeking a pioneering leader to drive AI, data science and advanced analytics across Talent Insight & Management. You will build longitudinal player models, identify emerging talent and support decision-making with trustworthy intelligence tools.

You will develop secure agentic AI capabilities, integrate structured and unstructured data, and translate complex analyses into actionable guidance for coaches and staff, underpinning Welsh rugby development and performance.

Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent in data science or related quantitative discipline.
• Strong experience applying data science and ML to real-world problems.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and/or R and SQL.
• Experience developing predictive models and feature engineering.
• Understanding of statistical inference and model limitations.
• Familiar with longitudinal/time-series data and progression modelling.
• Experience with generative AI and large language models.
• Ability to prototype and productionise AI-enabled workflows.
• Experience with cloud-based data environments and scalable analytics.
• Strong data engineering fundamentals and data wrangling.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI and data science across Talent Insight & Management, translating strategic rugby and talent questions into analytical models and tools.
• Develop longitudinal player intelligence and understand how players develop over time.
• Build trajectory and potential models using statistical modelling and ML.
• Develop predictive indicators of future performance considering multiple factors.
• Create an agentic AI workforce to secure data gathering, monitoring and scouting workflows.
• Integrate structured and unstructured information to enhance player understanding.
• Produce validated models and ensure continual improvement with new data.
• Translate analysis into decision-ready intelligence for coaches and leaders.

Skills

Data science

Python/R

SQL

Time-series

Predictive modelling

Agentic AI

Cloud computing

Data engineering

Statistical inference

Human-in-the-loop

Welsh language

Education

Data science degree

Postgraduate qualification

Statistics/math degree

Tools

Python

R

SQL

Cloud platforms

Job description

Welsh Rugby Union Group is seeking a pioneering leader to drive AI, data science and advanced analytics across Talent Insight & Management. You will build longitudinal player models, identify emerging talent and support decision-making with trustworthy intelligence tools.

You will develop secure agentic AI capabilities, integrate structured and unstructured data, and translate complex analyses into actionable guidance for coaches and staff, underpinning Welsh rugby development and performance.