Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Salary: £45,000 - 66,000 per year

Requirements:

• 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 such as 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 model 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.
• Experience working in a fast-changing environment, demonstrating adaptability and the ability to support the team through uncertainty and pivot as necessary.
• Understanding of sports data, including hands-on experience working 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 is a plus.

Responsibilities:

• Act as the technical lead for a critical ML domain such as live sports insights and personalisation, real-time ranking, computer vision for multi-angle video, or streaming inference.
• Influence roadmaps, architecture, and platform evolution beyond single models while mentoring engineers and data scientists and raising standards across teams.
• Lead the end-to-end development of AI solutions using Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Generative AI, and data science.
• 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 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 and an optimal balance between cost, latency, and production-scale performance.

Technologies:

• AI
• Architect
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• Computer Vision
• Support
• Machine Learning
• Mobile
• PyTorch
• Python
• TensorFlow
• Embedded

More:

We are Sky, building better content, products, and careers across Tech, Product, and Data. We are rethinking how sports are experienced through an AI-driven platform that delivers immersive, personalised live sports experiences, fresh perspectives, and predictive insights for millions of fans. This is a hybrid role with 2 days a week onsite in our Osterley office. We offer a generous pension package, private healthcare, discounted mobile and broadband, Sky VIP rewards and experiences, and access to our Osterley campus with subsidised restaurants, cafes, gym, cinema, shuttle buses, and other on-site amenities. We are a Disability Confident Employer and welcome applications from all candidates, supporting reasonable adjustments where needed.

last updated 30 week of 2026