Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Live Sports Insights)

Overview

As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer at Sky, you will shape the technical strategy and delivery of production ML systems that transform raw sports data and live video into real‑time insights and personalised experiences for millions of fans.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end‑to‑end development of AI solutions using Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Generative AI, and data science to enable capabilities such as automated sports metadata generation and detection of key events in live content and data streams.
• Generate actionable insights for player performance, contextual statistics, and injury risk by designing models with embedded responsible and ethical AI principles from design through deployment.
• Integrate model‑driven insights into personalisation engines, tailoring recommendations based on favourite teams, players, match context, and other signals while ensuring transparency, fairness, and appropriate use of data.
• Define advanced experimental designs, lead A/B testing, develop and maintain metrics and dashboards, establish robust MLOps practices, and own end‑to‑end productionisation from data ingestion through deployment and ongoing model monitoring.
• Design, architect, and operate low‑latency, highly reliable cloud‑based AI systems for live sports scenarios, ensuring resilient performance during peak traffic, responsible model behaviour in real time, and an optimal balance between cost, latency, and production scalability.

Qualifications

• Proven extensive lead‑level engineering experience delivering data‑driven ML systems with clear ownership of technical direction, mentoring, and delivery.
• Working knowledge of modern ML techniques, including Generative AI, and how emergent models can extract insights from multimodal sports data (e.g., numerical, spatial, video, or metadata).
• Advanced Python expertise with strong hands‑on use of ML/DL frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow, including taking models from experimentation into production serving.
• End‑to‑end MLOps experience, including CI/CD for ML, experiment tracking, model registries, drift detection, automated retraining, and infrastructure‑as‑code practices.
• Proven technical leadership experience, including mentoring and guiding senior and mid‑level data scientists in their day‑to‑day work and career development. Demonstrated adaptability in fast‑changing environments.

Nice to Have

• Understanding of sports data, including hands‑on experience with event data, tracking data, or other high‑volume sports datasets, and converting these into actionable analytical or predictive insights.
• Passion for sport and a desire to push the sports experience to the next level.

Benefits

• Sky Q for TV content all in one place.
• Exclusive rate for Sky Glass.
• A generous pension package.
• Private healthcare.
• Discounted mobile and broadband.
• A wide range of Sky VIP rewards and experiences.

Inclusion & How You’ll Work

We are a Disability Confident Employer and welcome applications from all candidates. We will make reasonable adjustments to support you where appropriate. Sky embraces hybrid working, combining time at the Osterley office with remote work as per role requirements.

#J-18808-Ljbffr…