Pay Rate: £12.21 per hour plus £1.47 holiday pay
Advertising End Date
12 Dec 2025

Role & Department Overview

This role is being advertised by Lancaster University Research & Enterprise Services Division as part of the UKSPF funded Data Catalyst project on behalf of the client, Invincibles Studio Limited.

We are Invincibles Studio, a mobile games developer based in Preston. known for developing our flagship football management simulator, the Soccer Manager series. The franchise has been in active development for over ten years, evolving through multiple design iterations and expansions, reaching over 100M+ lifetime users.

We are seeking a Lancaster University student to work with us to carry out data analysis (user segmentation, behavioural clustering and user segmentation) on our data to assist with improving gameplay and user engagement.
 
 Our development philosophy is strongly data driven. We are continuously running experiments, and analysing player behaviours to understand how to improve gameplay and engagement. Player activity is captured through “events based tracking” using the Google cloud product suite. Every time a user performs an action in-game, we receive a semi-anonymous event to tell us what was performed and at what time.  While user information is anonymous, we can track unique user ids and countries of origin to be able to build up a profile of different demographics. Due to our large user base, and deep gameplay experiences, we have produced very large data stores containing rich behavioural signals.

 Soccer Manager offers a wide-ranging, dynamic and highly customisable gameplay experience. We offer our players over 900 clubs to manage, across 54 countries and 90 leagues. With multiple routes of progression and playstyles, this breadth of choice makes traditional user segmentation difficult. The player journey is non-linear with high cardinality.

Engagement patterns can vary widely. Some players focus on long-term club development from lower leagues, others engage purely with large clubs playing out multiple seasons.  While some players monetise early, others might never monetise but remain highly active.

Understanding how these behaviours might relate to engagement and monetisation is strategically important for us as a business. To support this, we aim to build a data-driven player archetype framework that can classify users into meaningful behavioural segments. This will lay the framework to identify where they churn or drop off in the user journey, and determine which archetypes correlate with long-term engagement and revenue.

What we provide:

  • Access to extensive data stores on event-level gameplay
  • Support from our analytics/data team
 
Start Date: ASAP
Pay Rate: £12.21 per hour plus £1.47 holiday pay 
End Date: 8 March 2026 
Interview Date: TBC
Working Pattern: Variable
Location: Remotely (in the UK) and off-campus at Invincibles Studio as required

Job Description

Project activity: ‘Exploring players’ styles and progressions’

  • Identify the current progression patterns/ clusters. Extensive discussions with Invincibles Studio will build a deep understanding of the current / existing player progressions. Note, the data can be sliced based on the customer category, first, (cross-sectionally) and then the progression (temporally).
  • Work on the existing patterns to try to propose meaningful clusters, which are less noisy, through aggregating the clusters.
  • Identify which customer category and progression that potentially lead to monetisation and engagement.
At the end of the project a technical report, a presentation, and the codes will be presented to the client.

Person Specification

Essential

  • Current Lancaster University postgraduate student, must be available between January and March 2026.  This role would ideally suit a PhD student however we will consider applications from MSc Data Science students.
  • Knowledge of machine learning, pattern recognition, and clustering is ideal.
  • Excellent written communication skills (e.g., ability to clearly and effectively communicate with a range of different audiences and stakeholders)
  • Strong interpersonal skills (e.g., ability to work well and communicate effectively with a diverse group of people, including academic staff and external organisations)
  • Strong organisational and time management skills (e.g., ability to effectively organise time to meet multiple deadlines)
  • Reliable (e.g., ability to adhere to agreed timelines)
  • Flexible, organised, and self-motivated (e.g., flexibility to work with different sources of information)
  • Excellent IT skills (e.g. MS Word, Teams).
  • High standards of professionalism and attention to detail (e.g., maintaining confidentiality and demonstrating professional conduct).

Working in this role will help develop the following skills and experience:

  • Collaboration
  • Creativity
  • Curiosity
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Exercising Professional Judgement
  • Flexibility

You are required to submit a cover letter to support your application. Applications without a cover letter will not be considered.

Please note: Unless specified otherwise in the advert wording, this role is only open to individuals living in the UK.

Under the terms of this work, we endeavour to provide the advertised number of hours however, hours are not guaranteed and that work may cease if there is a fall in demand. 

Adverts that display a closing date should be treated as a guide. We reserve the right to close the vacancy once we have received sufficient applications, so we advise you to submit your application as early as possible to prevent disappointment.

Apply

Help and advice on making applications can be found on the Lancaster University Careers pages. Visit www.lancaster.ac.uk/careers.

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