About Marquee

At Marquee, we’re building the AI platform that professional sports clubs use to scout, recruit, and analyze players. We combine deep learning with real match data to give clubs actionable intelligence — from player chemistry and transfer fit to AI-generated scouting reports. Having already secured funding and gone live with professional football clubs across the globe, we are now looking to make a major leap forward as we expand into basketball and additional sports.

The Role

As VP Data, you will partner directly with the co-founder & CDO to own the data function end-to-end — the models, pipelines, infrastructure, and team. This is a senior leadership role for a strategic thinker and hands-on technologist who possesses a broad vision for complex, multi-model systems, combined with a proven ability to lead, manage, and collaborate effectively across teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership: Own the technical direction and end-to-end data stack (multi-model deep learning, LLM/agent systems, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure).
• Team & Management: Build, mentor, and scale a world-class data team; establish a high bar for technical quality and collaboration.
• Product Partnership: Translate complex scouting and analytics needs into a coherent, scalable technical roadmap in close collaboration with Product and Engineering.
• Validation & Rigor: Implement rigorous validation practices, measuring models against real-world outcomes rather than vanity metrics.

Requirements

• Experience: 8+ years of experience in Data Science / Machine Learning, with at least 3+ years of experience directly managing data teams.
• Technical Depth: Strong hands-on proficiency in Python and modern ML tooling (PyTorch, pandas, NumPy); credible enough to architect systems and review code.
• Complex Systems & Pipelines: Deep understanding of deep learning fundamentals, production deployment, and robust data engineering (ETL, SQL, messy real-world datasets).
• Modern AI: Experience building and evaluating LLM- and agent-based systems in production.
• Broad Vision & Collaboration: Exceptional communication skills with a proven ability to align stakeholders, manage cross-functional processes, and work seamlessly within a team.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), transformers, decision intelligence, or embedding-based retrieval.
• Experience scaling a data team from an early stage.
• Football/sports domain knowledge or analytics background (a massive plus).
• 1,000+ hours in Football Manager.