Data Scientist @ Southampton FC
Southampton FC are hiring a Data Scientist based at their Staplewood Campus and this is the second role I've reviewed at the club recently, following the Head of Data and Research position a few weeks ago. It's worth reading this one alongside that post because a lot of what I learned there fills in some of the gaps here.
In this role, you'll be supporting all the clubs in the Sport Republic group, developing automated pipelines, creating metrics and building advanced predictive models. It does say you'll be liaising with data engineers on the cleansing and ingestion of data sources. (I learned from Joe Ferrelly when I spoke to him about the other role that the club's data engineering function sits within IT rather than data science. It's not my preferred setup but it is far preferable to not having a separate data engineering function at all.)
Reading the whole thing together this role is a combination of machine learning scientist, ML operations and decision scientist. Conducting research, creating apps and dashboards, and from the previous post we know these will most likely be Shiny R and Flask Python apps.
It doesn't say too much about what you need to be successful. It mentions multiple languages which makes sense in the group structure. And it says previous experience within a professional club is desirable but applications from other areas will be considered if you have a passion for football and a strong understanding of tactics. This is good, and of course if you're trying to come in from the outside it's always wise to have published work that demonstrates your passion and understanding of the football data landscape. Published work online or speaking at conferences such as Field of Play gives you more concrete evidence that you can be trusued in these area.
On the other hand it doesn't really tell you what success looks like or where you fit in. There's a line about investment in other sports tech companies but it's unclear what that actually means. It's a fairly general surface level role description and feels a bit fuzzy. But my previous conversation with Joe gave me a fairly clear sense that the reality behind the previous advert, and therefore probably this one, is more solid than it reads. He was clear that they have good engineering practices, the teams are well supported and there's good integration into football decision-making, even if the way this particular advert is written doesn't really give you that sense.
Based at Staplewood, closing date is the 26th of August and no mention of any kind of hybrid working.
