About Us

The Carlton Football Club is one of Australia’s oldest and most prominent sporting institutions. Founded in 1864, the Club is headquartered at IKON Park in Carlton, where our state-of-the-art facilities support a world-class high-performance environment across our AFL, AFLW and VFL programs.

We are passionate about our contribution to the community and foster an inclusive and welcoming culture where our values are at the core of who we are and what we do.

About the Role

Carlton Football Club has made a deliberate and significant investment in data and AI, backed by genuine leadership conviction and a culture that embraces innovation at every level. The Head of Football Intelligence is an inaugural role for the Club, sitting at the intersection of strategy, data and technology. This role exists to break down the boundaries between those disciplines and fuse them into a single, cohesive intelligence function that drives how Carlton prepares, analyses and competes. With a strong foundation already in place, this is a rare platform for a bold thinker to come in and deliver something truly transformational in elite sport.

Reporting to the GM of Football, the Head of Football Intelligence is a strategic leadership role responsible for driving Carlton Football Club’s football analytics and data intelligence capability across the AFL, AFLW, VFL and Carlton Academy programs.

As a senior leader, the incumbent will set direction, connect priorities across departments and ensure the football department is focused on the most impactful data and AI opportunities. The role acts as the primary conduit between the Football Department and the Club’s Data, Technology and AI team, ensuring the football program extracts full value from the Club’s broader data and technology infrastructure – including Blue Lake, Snowflake and Claude Enterprise.

This role will lead the Football Department’s performance analyst team and work alongside List Management, Sports Science, High Performance and Football Operations to ensure data and analytics informs decisions across every part of the football program. Critically, this role will define measures of success, lead area-specific projects and develop and operationalise the Football Department’s data strategy, building a future-proofed, industry-leading department that consistently drives both innovation and competitive advantage.

This is a full-time, fixed-term opportunity for an exceptional data and analytics leader ready to make their mark in elite sport.

Key Responsibilities

- Lead the modernisation of Carlton’s football analytics outputs across AFL, AFLW, VFL and Carlton Academy, driving a shift to traits-based analysis,



strategic benchmarking and forward-looking intelligence.
- Develop and operationalise the Football Department’s data strategy in alignment with the Club’s broader data and AI strategies, ensuring strategic priorities translate into actionable workstreams across the program.
- Lead the design and redesign of key football workflows, including post-game reporting and opposition profiling, and explore ways to better connect GPS and performance data to surface meaningful insights.
- Present key data and findings to football leadership, including monthly gameplan and game-style benchmarking, competition trends analysis and mid-year program reviews.
- Champion the adoption of AI tools and modern analytics tooling across the program, identifying pain points throughout the year and delivering solutions that extract competitive advantage from emerging technology.
- Act as the primary conduit between the football department and the Data, Technology and AI team, driving adoption of Blue Lake and ensuring football extracts full value from the Club’s data centralisation project.
- Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to design, implement and optimise data integration architecture, ensuring data flows between applications meet football and business requirements.
- Lead data governance across the football department – addressing lapses in data hygiene, championing responsible AI use, and keeping football aligned with the Club’s AI Governance and Usage frameworks.
- Lead the performance analyst group across AFL, AFLW, VFL and Carlton Academy, setting clear direction, lifting capability and driving accountability while fostering solid working relationships across the football department.
- Work across List Management, Sports Science, High Performance and Football Operations to ensure analytics actively informs decisions across every part of the program.

Experience, Skills and Attributes

- Tertiary qualification in mathematics, statistics, computer science, data science or a related field; postgraduate qualification desirable.
- Demonstrated senior leadership experience within a data, analytics or performance intelligence function, with a proven ability to manage and develop high-performing teams.
- Strong technical foundation across data and cloud architecture, including working knowledge of RESTful APIs, SQL, Python,



cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud), and Data Lake or Lakehouse design including Snowflake or equivalent.
- Working knowledge of cloud security best practices, data governance frameworks and data quality standards.
- Proficiency with business intelligence and visualisation tools such as Tableau or Power BI; familiarity with Atlassian products including Confluence and Jira desirable.
- Demonstrated project management experience leading complex, multi-stakeholder data and technology projects end to end.
- A strategic thinker – comfortable challenging the status quo, cutting through complexity and bringing people along on the journey.
- An exceptional communicator, able to engage and influence diverse audiences across all levels, from football executives to technical specialists.
- Self-motivated and proactive, with the ability to work autonomously while contributing meaningfully as part of a senior leadership team.
- Previous experience in a high-performance or elite sporting environment is desirable – we are open to exceptional candidates from outside football.
- Valid Victorian Working with Children Check, National Police Check and current driver’s licence.

Benefits and Culture

Carlton’s values underpin how the Club operates, describing how our people work together, interact and behave. The Club is passionate about its culture, focused on cultivating a unique sense of belonging and connection. In addition, we offer our people flexible working, learning and development opportunities, as well as employee benefits such as membership, café and retail discounts, and the opportunity to work in a world-class sporting environment at the forefront of data and AI innovation in elite sport.

How to Apply

Please submit your current resume and cover letter by Monday 6 October, noting applicants may be contacted sooner.

The Carlton Football Club is an equal opportunity employer and a place who welcomes all. We encourage people with diverse experiences and backgrounds to apply. We are committed to fostering a workplace environment which is inclusive, safe and flexible. All applicants will be considered based on the relevance of their abilities to the role and their alignment with our Club Values.

The Carlton Football Club is committed to providing a welcoming environment where the safety and wellbeing of all children and young people involved in our programs, services, activities, events, and the broader community, will always be our first priority. All staff must hold (or be willing to obtain) a current Victorian Working with Children Check and valid Police Check as part of their employment with the Club.

📌 Head of Football Intelligence (Carlton North)
🏢 Carlton Football Club
📍 Carlton North