Football Data Scientist

Football Data Scientist | Collingwood Football Club (Jobs in Sports Performance Analysis TheASPA)

📍 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 🇦🇺 🏉 AFL | Football Analytics & Insights 💼 Full-time ⏰ Closing: Friday 16 October 2026

Collingwood Football Club are recruiting a Football Data Scientist to develop new ways of measuring, understanding and improving football performance across the club.

The role combines data science, football analysis and AI, building models, metrics and decision-support tools that can directly inform coaching, player development, opposition preparation and wider football decision-making.

The Role

Working within Collingwood’s Football Analysis & Insights function, the successful candidate will help advance the club’s analytical capability through statistical modelling, machine learning, AI and football-specific research.

The position will generate insights across team performance, opposition profiling, competition trends, player development and strategic football priorities.

Importantly, this is an applied role. The successful candidate will be expected not only to build sophisticated analytical solutions, but to ensure they are interpretable, trusted and embedded within football workflows.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and deliver analytical models, metrics and decision-support tools that inform football decisions.
• Apply statistical modelling and machine learning to practical football performance questions.
• Balance analytical sophistication with simplicity and interpretability for coaches and practitioners.
• Lead exploratory research into emerging trends across team and player performance.
• Develop insights supporting opposition profiling, player development and team preparation.
• Maintain high standards of statistical rigour and appropriately validate findings before communicating them.
• Provide matchday analytical support, including real-time feedback and relevant game-day technology.
• Explore new datasets, analytical practices and technologies.
• Use AI coding agents and modern development tools to improve analytical productivity and experimentation.
• Work with football staff to translate applied problems into clearly defined analytical questions.
• Collaborate across Analysis, Coaching, Development, Recruiting, Sports Science and Football Executive functions.
• Work alongside Collingwood’s central Data team to turn analytical prototypes into reliable and scalable decision-support tools.

Weekend work will be required as part of matchday support.

Essential Requirements

Applicants should demonstrate:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science or a related quantitative discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong programming skills for statistical modelling, with Python preferred.
• Advanced capability in statistical modelling and machine learning.
• Ability to select appropriate analytical methods for applied football problems.
• Experience using AI coding agents and modern development tooling.
• Practical experience applying data science to real-world datasets.
• Ability to translate analysis into actionable insights.
• Excellent communication, presentation and stakeholder-management skills.

Desirable Experience

Particularly relevant experience includes:

• Developing models or performance metrics within elite or high-performance sport.
• Knowledge of AFL concepts, terminology and football workflows.
• Taking analytical projects from prototype through to tools or workflows adopted by practitioners.
• Building credibility and influencing non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with cloud data platforms, version control and reproducible analytical workflows.

Previous AFL experience is not essential.

Why This Role?

This position sits directly between football analysis and modern data science, with the opportunity to influence how analytics is used throughout an elite sporting organisation:

Football Questions → Data → Statistical Modelling → AI → Performance Insight → Decision-Support Tools → Coaching & Football Decisions

For analysts and data scientists interested in applied sport, the role provides exposure across performance analysis, opposition profiling, player development, recruitment and matchday decision support.

Benefits

Collingwood offer:

• Access to a state-of-the-art High Performance Gym.
• Professional development and learning opportunities.
• Tickets to AFL and AFLW matches.
• Partner benefits and discounts.
• Opportunities to support community and volunteering programmes.
• Behind-the-scenes matchday experiences.
• Additional Seasonal Leave on top of annual leave.

How to Apply

Applicants should submit a CV and cover letter outlining:

• Why they want to work with Collingwood Football Club.
• How their skills and experience meet the requirements of the role.
• How they would contribute to the club’s culture.

📧 [email protected]

⏰ Applications close COB Friday 16 October 2026.

Collingwood note that the vacancy may close earlier if a high volume of applications is received.

A Working with Children Check will be required prior to appointment.

Football Data Scientist | Collingwood Football Club (Jobs in Sports Performance Analysis TheASPA)

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