Research Engineer in St Albans

We are looking for a Research Engineer to join our Data Analytics team, embedded directly with the Men’s First Team Analysis department, and play a key role in working with Analytics and Analysis colleagues to plan, implement, and deploy end-to-end internal products supporting the Men’s First Team.

In this exciting role, you'll be entrusted to work directly with a variety of colleagues across our club, such as Analysts and Coaching staff, on building data-driven applications and tooling for football analysis, driving the adoption of proprietary, state-of-the-art technology in coaching and analysis workflows, and identifying opportunities for furthering our applied research capabilities.

The role is accountable directly to the Head of Software & Analytics and Men’s First Team Head of Analysis to gather requirements from stakeholders at Sobha Realty Training Centre and collaborate with colleagues within the department to ensure appropriate prioritisation and delivery of relevant applications and tooling.

Your day-to-day:

• Design and develop full-stack applications - you will collaborate with colleagues to design, develop, and maintain full-stack data-driven applications tailored for use by our club stakeholders, ensuring solutions are efficient, reliable, and scalable.
• Streamline critical processes - you'll help automate and streamline select football analysis tasks and processes using a combination of full-stack software engineering and applied ML.
• Collaborate with our Football Analysis department - you will work closely with Football Analysts to deeply understand their processes and proactively plan and implement technical solutions to augment, refine and improve those processes.
• Act as an applied AI specialist - you'll be a subject matter expert in the application of AI techniques in football analysis, driving and contributing to projects that sit at the intersection of the two domains.
• Maximise the impact of our applied research - you will be integral in helping us to maximise the impact of our applied research work by ensuring it is grounded in concrete coaching/analysis needs, and accounts for real-world football analysis constraints.

What we are looking for:

• Proven quantitative background - you hold an advanced qualification in a quantitative discipline (e.g., computer science, data science, mathematics, statistics, data visualisation), or a related field with proven expertise in building technical, data-driven solutions.
• Solid foundation in software engineering and machine learning principles - you've got the ability to reason from first principles about research ideas and engineering trade-offs, and you have a willingness to build working full-stack applications.
• Eye for design - you have the ability to design and critique the presentation of data-driven insights and interfaces.
• Engineering mindset - you have a track record of designing and developing scalable data-driven applications.
• Experience with key programming languages - you're well-versed in using Python, SQL, and JavaScript/TypeScript.
• PyData tech stack fluency - you are comfortable with numpy, Pandas/Polars, matplotlib/seaborn/Altair, and similar tooling.
• Excellent communicator - you communicate confidently and effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues, and you're able to understand the requirements of stakeholders, with an ability to critically evaluate requests and project proposals.
• Adaptable and proactive approach - you can operate in a high-intensity environment and maintain some schedule flexibility, accommodating the need to collaborate with our Men's First Team staff on the training and matchday schedule when required.
• Highly independent and self-motivated individual - you're able to work independently and you thrive when you're in situations with ambiguity, where close collaboration with others is required to drive clarity.
• Experience with deep learning frameworks - you have worked with PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow.
• Knowledge of our game - you've got a good knowledge of and passion for football and are motivated to help our club win on and off the pitch.

Why choose us:

• An exciting reward and recognition scheme.
• Generous holiday allowance which increases with your length of service.
• Great internal learning and development programmes.
• A flexible hybrid working model.
• Priority access to apply for match tickets.
• A competitive health and wellbeing benefits package.
• A leading Employee Assistance Programme.
• Great discounts with some of our Partners.
• An opportunity to play a vital role in delivering our ED&I strategy by joining one of our Employee Networks.

Arsenal for Everyone is our commitment to promoting and embracing equality, diversity and inclusion, so that everyone connected to the club feels like they belong to the same Arsenal family. We believe that diversity of background, skills and experience drives our success on and off the pitch.

We are a Disability Confident Leader. We actively welcome and encourage applications from people with disabilities and long-term health conditions. If you need disability-related adjustments to the recruitment process, please indicate this in your application.

Application Closing Date - Thursday 6th August 2026. Please note: we reserve the right to close the position early if application volumes are particularly high. We encourage you to get your application in sooner rather than later.