Lead Data Scientist @ Livingston FC

Livingston FC who were recently relegated from the Scottish Premiership and will be looking to bounce back are hiring a Lead Data Scientist and they've put out what can only be described as a very ambitious job spec -> https://livingstonfc.co.uk/job-opportunity-lead-data-scientist/

(For full clarity I reached out to people I'm connected with at Livingston but haven't been able to get any more detail about this role. If that changes I'll update this.)

The way I read this is a role asking one person, potentially coming in as the first person to attempt this at the club, to cover every aspect of the full stack within a football operation. Recruitment analysis, opposition preparation, performance monitoring, GPS and wellness data, predictive modelling, injury risk, data infrastructure, pipelines, internal tool building and long term strategic support. The spec and the surrounding documentation don't do a great job of explaining where this person would sit within any existing infrastructure which potentially means there isn't any. And in that case this is an impossibly full stack ask for a single person.

There is nothing wrong with being ambitious and there's been quite a bit of evidence within the Scottish Premiership recently that this kind of ambition can pay off. Hearts and Motherwell, a club that (for full disclosure) my company Twelve work with, have both shown that the monetary gap can at least be partially bridged by using data and evidence-based processes effectively.

So the scope of what Livingston are asking for reflects a club that genuinely wants to build something serious. But the scale is going to be incredibly challenging for one person to deliver well on and the risk is falling into the trap of doing a large number of things not very well rather than doing a few things really well. The technical requirements also don't read like they've been written by someone with a technical background which suggests this person may be coming in to figure a lot of this out for the first time, and potentially educate the club along the way. That's a tough ask on both sides.

The role is based in Livingston which sits between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Hybrid working is possible but only two days a week which is likely to narrow the applicant pool considerably. A 'highly competitive salary' is on offer though.

I'm not in the business of criticising clubs that are trying to transform how they work, that's exactly what they should be doing. But I would suggest anyone applying goes in with their eyes open about how much of this they're likely to be able to achieve on their own.