About us
Joining the Hawthorn Football Club represents a unique opportunity to work in a fast paced, elite sporting environment where you can be yourself and thrive.
Our Club’s values and One Club philosophy across our men’s and women’s football programs ensures that inclusion and diversity are at the core of all we do. You will work and thrive in an environment that is committed to excellence and supported by a culture of wellbeing and work/family balance.
Our strategic priorities guide the Club to deliver long term objectives to continually grow, innovate and achieve on-field success. We are excited to have recently relocated to our new state of the art home Kennedy Community Centre in Dingley.
We are committed to creating a supportive environment in which people feel connected to our football club and to each other. Importantly we want to have fun!
About the role
We are seeking a skilled and forward‑thinking Data Engineer to play a pivotal role in advancing the club’s data engineering capability. This role will take ownership of our expanding data environment and drive continuous improvement across data pipelines, platforms, and architecture.
You will be instrumental in enabling data‑driven decision‑making across both our football and administration departments, laying the foundations for advanced analytics, Knowledge Graph technologies, and AI‑native applications. This is a hands‑on role for someone who enjoys building scalable, secure, and high‑quality data solutions in a modern cloud environment.
Key Accountabilities
- Design, develop, and maintain scalable and reliable data pipelines and ETL processes using Google Cloud Platform services including BigQuery, Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions, Gemini Enterprise, and Vertex AI.
- Implement data integration solutions to ingest, process, and store large volumes of structured and unstructured data from multiple internal and external sources.
- Optimise and fine‑tune data pipelines to ensure high performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.
- Ensure data quality, integrity, and security through validation, cleansing, transformation, auditing, and monitoring processes.
- Oversee and continuously improve the club’s GCP and Snowflake data environment, ensuring data structures are performant, secure, and operate as a trusted single source of truth.
- Structure and model data to support the club’s AI‑native roadmap, implementing a Knowledge Graph ontology and applying semantic models supporting downstream AI workflows.
- Collaborate closely with business and football stakeholders to understand data needs and translate them into robust, scalable data solutions.
Our ideal candidate
We’re looking for a curious and hands‑on Data Engineer with strong GCP experience who thrives on building scalable, high-quality data pipelines. You enjoy solving complex problems, working collaboratively, and are excited by the opportunity to contribute to an AI‑native future using modern
data technologies.
You’ll Bring:
·2+ years’ experience in a Data Engineering role, with demonstrated hands‑on expertise in GCP and cloud‑based data environments.
Strong technical capability across modern data tools and platforms such as BigQuery or Snowflake, along with processing tools including SQL, Python, and Excel.
·Advanced experience in data wrangling and building, optimising, and maintaining data pipelines, with a solid understanding of data security and best practices.
·Naturally curious, with a passion for solving complex problems and an interest in mapping relationships through Knowledge Graphs, data catalogues, and AI‑ready infrastructure.
·A collaborative team player who thrives in high‑energy environments, with a proactive approach and the confidence to take ownership from day one.
·Strong interest in AI, emerging technologies, and data innovation, with a desire to continuously learn and evolve.
·Passion for sport is beneficial (particularly AFL), with an understanding of the rhythm and language of the game considered an advantage.
Please submit your application including your resume and cover letter by Tuesday 23rd June 2026.
Our offer to you
As a Hawthorn Football Club employee, you will work in a supportive, values driven and harmonious team. You will be challenged and provided with opportunities to learn new things, grow, and develop. Our initiatives which drive wellbeing, connection and performance include:
- Access to state of the art gym and pool facilities
- Weekly pilates classes
- Summer Hours (Dec/ Jan) with half day Friday’s
- Flexible work arrangements
- Special offers and discounts through our Corporate Partners
- Industry leading Parental Leave Policy
- Professional development opportunities – inhouse and external
- Complimentary One Club memberships to enjoy Hawthorn games with family and friends
The Hawthorn Football Club is an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages applications from suitably qualified and diverse candidates. We welcome applicants who reflect the diversity of the
Australian community and encourages applicants from the following backgrounds to apply:
· Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
· Culturally and linguistically diverse
· LGBTIQ+
· People with a disability
We provide a welcoming, safe, and flexible approach to work and provide an environment that benefits from and enables the best from everyone.
As an organisation we are committed to protecting children and young people from
harm. It is essential that anyone involved with the Hawthorn Football Club
understands their responsibility in relation to child safety. Our organisation
requires all applicants to obtain a ‘Working with Children Check’ prior to
appointment.
