Data Analyst @ Middlesborough
I was recently lucky enough to speak with Michael Lawson at Middlesbrough about the roles they have available there. The first is the Data Engineer role, which I wrote about already and this one is a (junior-ish) Data Analyst role.
Beyond what you can see in the advert, what I learned from Michael is that he’s been at the club for several years and has done a lot of the groundwork to build the foundations of a coherent data function. This is their opportunity to build it up with these two new roles.
Obviously it goes without saying I strongly approve of both of these bookending roles! The Data Engineer is a foundational role for any club, organising and cleaning data and making it available. But he described this Data Analyst role as very much “close to the pitch”, a decision science kind of role that’s really going to help coaches and other practitioners make more evidence-based decisions through data, helping to organise and coordinate the dashboarding and visualisation and building on the work Michael has started single-handedly.
He was pretty clear that this is a junior role though, as you can see from the advert, they need somebody with experience in internal and external football data. And of course Middlesbrough are doing particularly well at the moment, having recruited a manager I know well from my work, Kim Hellberg, formerly of Hammarby. This may turn into the opportunity for something bigger if the team continues to perform well this season and gets promoted to the Premier League.
There’s no visa sponsorship for this role. And while it’s described as hybrid, with at least two to three days on site, in this kind of role the more you can be in and around the club and the people making the decisions, the more effective you’re likely to be.
Closing date is 23 October.
If you’re currently working at a club as a data engineer or analyst, and thinking about moving on, you can contact me confidentially and I might be able to tell you a bit more. But if you’d need sponsorship or don't meet the ad requirements then I would not be able to help you, sorry.
