Job Postings: Blue Jays Baseball Research Analyst & Systems Engineer

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Baseball Systems Engineer- Toronto Blue Jays

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Primary Focus: To create tools and systems that support decision making in all areas of Baseball Operations.

Responsibilities and Duties:

  • Maintain and support the current end to end data warehousing process within Baseball Operations, starting with structured and unstructured data, conceiving and designing appropriate data structures, performing ETL processes to house the data in the data structures and exposing the data structures to end users.
  • Design and manage the integration process of new data sources into existing database structures and frameworks.
  • Develop and maintain data quality assurance processes to ensure database integrity in the future.
  • Understand and document current database structures, historical design decisions, format, definitions, limitations and content of currently used external and internal data feeds, and establish future requirements.
  • Complete ad-hoc database queries and analysis as dictated by circumstances.
  • Oversee the evaluation, selection, implementation and support of new database systems.
  • Develop and maintain conceptual, logical and physical data models.
  • Work with other developers to help support internal web applications.
  • Collaborate with members of the Baseball Operations developers to develop best practices for storing and displaying baseball data.
  • Recommend new data sources for purchase and/or new techniques to gather data.

Experiences and Job Requirements:

  • 2-3 years of related work experience is required. Demonstrated ability to successfully design and execute data warehousing projects is a plus.
  • Expertise with SQL and relational databases.
  • Experience with at least one of Python, Ruby, and/or other programming languages.
  • Excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to effectively explain complex technical concepts to a wide range of individuals.
  • Ability to read, speak and comprehend English effectively.
  • The ability to work with multicultural populations and a commitment to fairness and equality.
  • Ability to work evening, weekend and holiday hours as dictated by the baseball calendar.
  • Strong passion for baseball.

Relevant, but not Required:

  • Experience with a data pipeline orchestration framework such as Luigi, Airflow or MLFlow.
  • Experience with cloud platform such as Azure, AWS or GCP.
  • Experience processing large amounts of JSON formatted data.
  • Strong understanding of current baseball research.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found by clicking here.

Position: Analyst, Baseball Research

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Primary Focus: To conduct baseball research and contribute to ongoing departmental research. To create tools that incorporate data into the decision making process, as well as learning how decisions are made in all areas of Baseball Operations and working to improve those processes.

Responsibilities and Duties:

  • Design, test, implement and maintain advanced baseball metrics and predictive models using statistical techniques in order to contribute to strategy and decisions across all departments within Baseball Operations.
  • Conduct empirical research related to baseball strategy and player evaluation, with an understanding of how findings would apply to better decision making and increased operational effectiveness.
  • Collaborate with the front office, coaches and scouts while analyzing and displaying baseball data, including the creation of reports, charts, graphics, and other tools to deliver information to end users. Results of this work should help those within the organization better understand, consider and apply the use of information and data to their decisions and operation on a daily basis.
  • Collaborate with members of the Research and Development Department to provide constructive feedback on their projects.
  • Complete ad-hoc database queries and analysis as dictated by circumstances.
  • Recommend new data sources for purchase and/or new techniques to gather proprietary data.
  • Work to integrate new information into existing Baseball Operations processes and infrastructure.

Experiences and Job Requirements:

  • Passion for baseball and excellent reasoning, problem-solving, creative thinking, and communication skills.
  • Demonstrated ability to successfully design and execute rigorous quantitative research projects.
  • Strong understanding of current baseball research.
  • Proficiency with R, Python or other similar mathematical language.
  • Proficiency with SQL and relational databases.
  • Ability to read, speak and comprehend English effectively.
  • The ability to work with multicultural populations and a commitment to fairness and equality.
  • Ability to work evening, weekend and holiday hours as dictated by the baseball calendar.

Relevant, but not Required:

  • Published quantitative research about baseball (either online or print), related experience with sports teams or facilities, and/or open source code to review is a plus.
  • Demonstrated experience with machine learning methods, including clustering, random forests, boosting, and neural networks.
  • Any additional technical skills, such experience with baseball biomechanical data or motion capture systems or experience with the Tensorflow, PyTorch, or OpenCV frameworks are a plus.
  • Strong interpersonal skills to communicate effectively with a wide range of individuals including members of the front office, scouts, and field staff.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found by clicking here.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Toronto Blue Jays.





Meg is the managing editor of FanGraphs and the co-host of Effectively Wild. Prior to joining FanGraphs, her work appeared at Baseball Prospectus, Lookout Landing, and Just A Bit Outside. You can follow her on twitter @megrowler.

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Sammy Sooser
3 years ago

For serious applicants – Canadian tuxedo not required, but recommended.