Department: Data
Based at: Ewood Park stadium, Blackburn, BB2 4JF. Travel to Blackburn Rovers Senior Training Centre, Brockhall Village, Old Langho, Blackburn, BB6 8FA as and when required for the performance of duties.
Reports to: Head of Technical Development
Responsible for: N/A
Hours of work: A minimum of 40 hours per week plus any additional hours necessary. This will include regular evening and weekend work.
Contractual status: Permanent
Job purpose: To oversee the collation and translation of quantitative and qualitative data in order to improve performance in the football department.

Duties and responsibilities:
• Commit to safeguarding the well-being of elite players by ensuring data and
insights protect and enhance their physical and mental welfare while
maintaining professional boundaries;
• Lead data science efforts across performance analysis, scouting, recruitment,
and strategy to align with the club’s philosophy and support decision-makers;
• Collaborate with performance staff, coaches, and the wider football
department to generate actionable insights that impact player welfare,
performance, and recruitment strategies;
• Use advanced data science techniques to uncover new metrics, patterns, and insights from event and tracking data, improving current practices and refining the club's game model;
• Oversee the development and maintenance of secure, scalable data
infrastructure, including data warehouses and automated workflows for
seamless data interaction across departments;
• Work consistently to develop visually appealing dashboards and reports using PowerBI or Tableau, ensuring adherence to best practices and providing actionable insights tailored to football staff;
• Collaborate with scouting, performance analysis, and coaching teams to develop key metrics and KPIs for decision-making, and source new data to support future analysis;
• Maintain and evolve the recruitment platform by aligning scouting data with sophisticated data modelling, ensuring consistent data use across the club from first team to academy;
• Utilise x&y tracking data and freeze-frame positional data to create contextual metrics that align with the club’s playing and recruitment philosophy;
• Automate statistical reports and develop web-based tools to support
performance analysis and recruitment, continuously integrating new datasets for data ecosystem improvements;
• Manage stakeholder relationships across departments including medical and science teams, ensuring clear communication of complex data insights and improving data literacy;
• Contribute to the department's continuous professional development (CPD) program and undertake relevant CPD courses to stay updated on new methods in data science and football analysis;
• Expertise in cloud-based environments such as AWS or Azure, with a focus on data infrastructure and automation;
• Assist in the production of two-peer reviewed research publications in their key area of work per season; and
• Any other duty as reasonably assigned for the success and productivity of the department.

Skills required:
• A dynamic, hardworking and enthusiastic individual who is personally
committed to achieving agreed objectives;
• An excellent reading of the football game and the ability to relate this to the data it produces;
• Great communication skills and the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical teams;
• Excellent attention to detail;
• Must be able to work conscientiously and with total discretion;
• Ability to work independently but also in a team;
• Ability to meet tight deadlines;
• Ability to deal with unexpected situations and to multi-task;
• Set and maintain standards of work performance and deliver quality,
consistently and efficiently;
• Flexibility and commitment to work in accordance with the needs of the business;
• Strong proficiency in R/Python and ETL processes for data ingestion,
processing, and analysis;
• Strong proficiency in PowerBI, SQL, Python, and R for data analysis,
visualization, and model development; and
• Can remain calm and composed under pressure.

Knowledge / Experience required:
• Significant experience in data processing and analytics, ideally within elite or professional sport, with a strong track record in data analytics;
• Proven track record working within both structured and unstructured data sources;
• Experience working with football-related databases, tracking and event data, and version control systems;
• Extensive knowledge and experience in data storage, modelling, and SQL;
• Demonstrated success working within an elite sporting performance setting or with elite sporting organisations;
• Knowledge of using APIs for managing data sets;
• High-level understanding of the integration between football and data
analytics, and its impact on decision-making;
• In-depth knowledge of statistical analysis to maximise football outcomes;
• Experience in researching, writing reports, and presenting findings in a clear and concise manner;
• A deep understanding of computer science, data science, statistics,
mathematics, or a related field is preferred;
• Strong understanding of football data, sport science research and
performance, and established soccer data sources;
• A passion for football and a deep understanding of the game at an elite level; and
• Experience of being able to research and produce detailed reports and high level presentations of data.

Qualifications required:
Essential
• MSc Data Analysis, Computer Science or industry equivalent Desirable
• Working towards PhD in relevant area of data science

DBS check required: Yes (Enhanced)