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, 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 impacts through our operations and programs 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 organization for the application of innovative data science solutions in Football Performance & Talent through:
1. Developing strategically important data science initiatives that result in the delivery and implementation of actionable insights for talent identification, player trading, player development, and team performance.
2. Guiding fundamental engineering processes that move CFG towards the most comprehensive and empowering football data set in the world.
3. Embedding data-informed systems and processes related to Talent Identification & Evaluation to enable stakeholders to make more effective decisions in the transfer market.
4. Leading the Football Data team in creating and delivering data-informed systems and processes that enable proactive interventions related to team and player performance across CFG clubs.
5. Providing leadership in analytics engineering and data science to positively influence stakeholder actions.
6. Leading data science research and modeling, including introducing innovative approaches to solving existing problems.
7. Managing a highly skilled team of data scientists and data engineers, fostering a positive work environment through coaching and empowerment.
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, a Simplyhealth cash plan, an annual discretionary bonus, and a range of partnership and lifestyle discounts.
Your Impact
* Act as a senior voice in key football decision-making forums, ensuring data-driven insights are integrated into strategic and operational decisions.
* Advance CFG’s data science and AI capabilities through research, testing, in-house development, and collaborations with third parties.
* Manage and mentor a high-performing data science team, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning.
* Guide the development of data models and analytics best practices to create a unified dataset powering CFG’s Digital Twins for holistic analysis.
* Onboard complex data from third parties, enabling CFG to answer performance questions previously unanswerable.
* Build trust and understanding of data science across stakeholders by tailoring communication and visualizations.
* Develop innovative data science solutions embedded at the core of Talent, Performance, and Coaching processes, including talent identification, evaluation, recruitment, and development.
What we are looking for
Essential
* Senior professional in data science with a track record of delivering strategic impact in an elite environment.
* Degree in a quantitative field or equivalent experience in data-intensive leadership roles.
* Ability to lead large-scale, strategic data initiatives aligned with business or sporting objectives.
* Strong leadership skills, managing and inspiring diverse technical teams.
* Strategic thinker capable of balancing immediate delivery with long-term capability building.
* Experience communicating complex data science outputs to sporting stakeholders.
* Expertise in AI, machine learning, statistical modeling, and data engineering with hands-on experience in modern tools.
* Ability to embed data solutions that drive adoption and impact.
* Experience in managing collaborative R&D with internal teams and external partners.
* Understanding of the football landscape, including recruitment and performance analysis.
Desirable
* Postgraduate qualification or significant research experience in a quantitative field.
* Experience leading data science initiatives specifically in professional sport or football.
City Football Group promotes equal opportunities and welcomes 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 contact only those whose skills and experience meet our needs. Employment is subject to proof of eligibility to work in the UK and a DBS check upon commencement.
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