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Golden State Valkyries · 1 week ago

Sports Scientist/Performance Assistant (GSV)

Oakland, CA

Full-time

Onsite

Mid, Senior Level

$75K/yr - $85K/yr

7+ years exp

Golden State Valkyries are looking for a Sports Scientist/Performance Assistant who will collaborate across the full player performance continuum. The role involves managing data pipelines, conducting advanced analysis, and providing actionable insights to enhance athlete performance and recovery.

Sports

Responsibilities

Create, implement and manage the data pipeline for athlete performance monitoring: ingesting data from IMU wearables, athlete management systems (AMS), strength and power diagnostics, force plates, sport technology, rehab/medical metrics and game/practice statistics

Clean, validate and merge heterogeneous datasets to develop processes and ensure data integrity, timeliness and consistency

Conduct exploratory and advanced analysis to evaluate athlete-workload relationships, readiness, fatigue/recovery status, injury-risk indicators, return-to-play benchmarks and performance outcomes

Build, maintain and monitor dynamic dashboards and interactive visualizations via Power BI, Tableau, or custom web apps that deliver meaningful performance insights and training to coaches, performance medical staff and athletes

Translate quantitative findings into clear, practical recommendations to inform training design, recovery strategies, competition readiness, and player availability decisions

Lead applied sport-science research and continuous improvement by reviewing emerging literature, validate new monitoring technologies, pilot novel metrics and integrate them into operational frameworks

Provide leadership to drive culture change toward a data-empowered performance environment and facilitate education and training of staff and ensure data becomes embedded in decision-making

Maintain professional standards including strict confidentiality of athlete data, ensure ethical use of data, comply with relevant data protection/regulation (e.g., GDPR) and support regular review of processes and tools

Assist Head of Strength and Conditioning as needed

Qualification

Data analysisAthlete monitoring systemsStrength & Conditioning certificationProgramming PythonProgramming RProgramming SQLData visualization toolsStatistical modelingInterpersonal skillsLeadership skillsCollaboration

Required

Bachelor's degree in sports science, exercise science physiology, kinesiology, human performance or closely related field

3+ years applied experience in a professional or elite sports organization, preferably within basketball (or comparable team sport)

7+ years of leadership experience in performance science, analytics or multi-disciplinary integration

Proven proficiency in athlete monitoring systems and technologies (e.g., GPS/IMU platforms, force plates/power diagnostics, wellness platforms) and experience delivering load/ recovery/ readiness monitoring frameworks

Extensive programming and data-analytics experience and ability to work with coding languages and tools such as Python and/or R, SQL

Experience with data visualization/dashboard tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Shiny, and/or custom web app or similar data cleaning/processing and statistical analysis

Excellent interpersonal and leadership skills with the ability to earn athlete and staff trust, present complex findings in clear formats and collaborate across multiple stakeholders

Statistical modeling and advanced quantitative methods such as regression, time-series, Bayesian inference, causal inference, machine-learning models for prediction (e.g., load-response modelling)

Ability to work flexible hours, including evenings, weekends, and holidays