Software Engineering Graduate @ Manchester United

Here’s another job at Manchester United, in the data-adjacent space, this time on what they call their Early Careers Programme (which I can’t find too much out about but seems pretty good). The role is a 12 month fixed term contract, and it’s in the space of helping the club develop a self-service analytics platform, an "AI-first product designed to anticipate what users need rather than wait to be asked."

[At the risk of inserting an advert here, this is obviously very similar-sounding to the flagship product Earpiece that's been developed at Twelve Football, which is used by hundreds of clubs globally. And an interesting question, as ever, is how a club balances using the best-in-class products with building for themselves. While there are already many clubs who have already integrated this kind of product into their daily workflows, it often still makes sense for a larger club to want to develop something for themselves.]

What I like about the way they describe the programme is that it has clear objectives and project deliverables. So this isn’t just coming in and working, it sounds like there’s a clear path to building your technical expertise, alongside people who are genuinely world class at their roles, so you’ll probably be well mentored. And later on there’s the opportunity for the right candidate to progress into a full-time role.

Now most of this blog is about data science and analytics, and this isn't exactly that - it's clearly a software engineering function, embedded within the Data & AI team. It’s primarily about building applications that are usable. In fact data isn’t really even mentioned in the advert at all, let alone football data. It kind of just says you need to be capable of building websites, which will be used on both the football and the commercial side of the business (though based at Carrington, which is on the football side).

So is it a Data Science role or not? I would strongly argue that the Data Science is the whole thing: everything from ingesting data to delivering it to the expert practitioners, producing the right intelligence at the right time so they’re able to make the most evidence-based decisions at the moment they need them. So personally I would very much class this as a data science role and understanding of the data will be critical to it beign successful.

Overall this is a super interesting role for a young developer, in a role which will get close to decision-makers, building things that are probably going to make a difference to the club for a long time while giving you both technical skills and a pathway into football.

No salary given, closing date 23rd October, onsite at Carrington.