Research & Development Data Scientist | The Football Association in Wembley

Research & Development Data Scientist | The Football Association

4 September 2026 | Analysis, Coaching / Insights, Data Analyst

Research & Development Data Scientist | The Football Association (Jobs in Sports Performance Analysis TheASPA)

The Football Association is recruiting a Research & Development Data Scientist to join its Insights team, developing world-leading statistical and machine-learning models designed to provide a competitive advantage to England teams.

The Role

This is a research-led data science position focused on developing novel methods for understanding international football.

The successful candidate will work with multiple forms of football data — including event, optical and broadcast tracking, GPS and performance data — to design, train and validate models that can directly inform decision-making across England teams.

Importantly, the role provides scope for long-term research and experimentation, rather than simply applying existing analytical methods.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement advanced statistical and machine-learning models.
• Analyse event, optical tracking, broadcast tracking and GPS/performance datasets.
• Develop novel approaches to complex football performance questions.
• Research emerging developments across statistics, machine learning and AI and assess their application to football.
• Use AI coding agents and tools to accelerate development.
• Apply rigorous model validation and monitor model performance over time.
• Contribute to peer review and high standards of research practice.
• Work with the Senior Data Architect and Development Team to integrate analytical models into existing systems.
• Develop data pipelines within the FA's cloud infrastructure.
• Produce professional, reproducible and well-documented code.
• Translate complex model outputs into actionable football insights and visualisations.
• Contribute to web applications that allow stakeholders to explore model outputs.
• Work directly with technical and non-technical stakeholders to embed insights into decision-making.

What They're Looking For

• Master's degree in a highly quantitative discipline such as Mathematics, Statistics or Computer Science.
• Strong theoretical understanding of statistics and machine learning.
• Ability to critically evaluate contemporary academic research.
• Practical experience applying data science to real-world datasets.
• Strong statistical programming capability — Python preferred.
• Ability to work regularly from St. George's Park.

Football event or tracking-data experience is strongly desirable but not essential.

Beneficial

• PhD or evidence of strong academic achievement.
• Previous experience within elite football.
• Experience with AI coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex.
• GitHub and collaborative development.
• Deep learning, including Graph Neural Networks (GNNs).
• Development of web applications, particularly React.
• Experience working across technical and non-technical stakeholder groups.

The Opportunity

This is a particularly strong opportunity for someone operating at the intersection of academic research, football analytics and applied data science.

Rather than simply reporting what has happened, the emphasis is on creating new methods for understanding the game:

It could therefore suit candidates moving from academic or quantitative research into elite sport, as well as experienced football data scientists.

Benefits include hybrid working, private medical cover, pension, 25 days' annual leave plus additional leave, free lunches at St. George's Park/Wembley and access to selected Wembley events.

Research & Development Data Scientist | The Football Association (Jobs in Sports Performance Analysis TheASPA)

Further information are available through the FA Careers site

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