Meet the people building football’s smartest match intelligence
We’re a compact team of football experts, engineers and product builders turning match video into real-time, actionable insight — designed for elite performance environments.
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Leadership
Company direction, product vision and strategic execution.
John leads PlayIQ’s sport, data and market operations, combining football expertise with deep experience in game theory and high-stakes decision-making. After earning an MBA in Cambridge, he worked in football management and spent years as a professional poker player and sports bettor — a background that shapes how he thinks about probability, strategy and tactical behaviour on the pitch. At PlayIQ, he's focused on decoding football through AI and giving clubs real-time intelligence they can actually use.
Favourite football insight
“The best teams control space, not just the ball.”
Andreas leads technology, product and tech-operations at PlayIQ, overseeing the development of the company's AI-driven football intelligence platform. A civil engineer by education from the University College of Bergen, Andreas brings over a decade of experience in building and scaling companies in the sports-data space. In 2013 he founded Scout Gaming Group, which became Europe’s leading real-money fantasy platform. Deeply passionate about bridging the gap between sports and technology.
Favourite football insight
“It's what happens off the ball that decides the game.”
Commercial
Partnerships, sales and customer success.
Derek leads PlayIQ's commercial strategy, partnerships, and club engagement — helping professional football organisations adopt advanced AI-driven match intelligence. A CIMA-qualified finance and commercial leader, Derek brings over two decades of senior experience across the UK and Norway. Known as a trusted advisor to boards and CEOs, he brings structure, clarity, and commercially grounded decision-making to fast-moving environments. He strongly believes data, technology and football intelligence elevate performance and help clubs make smarter strategic choices.
Favourite football insight
“Data tells you what happened – intelligence tells you what it means.”
Product & Engineering
Building the platform, models and insight pipelines.
Torbjørn is CTO at PlayIQ, working closely with the team to shape the company’s AI-driven football intelligence platform across front- and backend services. Before PlayIQ, Torbjørn worked on designing, building, and launching sports games for world-leading gambling brands and major media houses — giving him a deep understanding of both the technical and commercial realities of sports products at scale.
Favourite football insight
“Identifying patterns between events tells you more than any single moment in the game.”
Øystein leads PlayIQ’s machine learning initiatives, working across the platform to design, implement, and refine the systems that power model inference and core match intelligence. Before joining PlayIQ, Øystein spent over 10 years at Scout Gaming Group, where he developed and architected internal developer frameworks and tools used across the organisation. At PlayIQ, he shapes the core intelligence layer — ensuring models, pipelines and integrations operate seamlessly and reliably to support analysts, coaches and clubs.
Favourite football insight
“Patterns emerge long before they become visible on the pitch.”
Nikhil leads PlayIQ’s post-processing and data transformation efforts, ensuring that complex model outputs are refined into structured, accurate, and actionable football intelligence. He previously spent several years at Scout Gaming Group, where he played a key role in developing new sports games and sportsbooks from the ground up, including fullstack features and integrations with external data providers. At PlayIQ, he builds the pipelines between raw inference and final insight — connecting events, smoothing logic, and implementing mathematical models together with football analysts.
Favourite football insight
“Turning data into clear information is where real understanding begins.”
Demian Linnyk
Head of QA
Kyiv, Ukraine
At PlayIQ, Demian is responsible for building the Quality Assurance process, validating the product's applicability to its consumers and ensuring certainty. Demian started his sports data journey in 2013 as Venue Data Coordinator for UEFA.com. His passion for football’s technical side soon led him to Scout Gaming Group, where he honed his data analytics skills alongside Quality Assurance expertise.
Favourite football insight
“While everyone watches the ball, the transition is crucial.”
Football Advisors
Specialists shaping football intelligence and on-pitch relevance.
Maxi is a Football Intelligence Advisor at PlayIQ, where he helps validate and shape the company's strategic direction from a coach's perspective. He brings extensive experience from his coaching career, holding coaching badges in Norway and further developing through coaching and studying the game in Italy. Most recently, he served as Head Coach of FK Fyllingsdalen. Maxi is a strong advocate for the shift from traditional statistical data to dynamic, real-time insights — an evolution he believes will transform how staffs prepare and make in-game decisions.
Favourite football insight
“The smartest insights come when numbers and context speak the same language.”
Samuel grew up in Valencia’s academy and plays today for Sandviken in the PostNord league, alongside being an instructor at Kniksen Academy. At PlayIQ, he brings modern academy methodology and player-level detail to strengthen how insights are interpreted and delivered to coaching staffs.
Want to work with PlayIQ?
We’re always open to exceptional talent across ML, video, product and football intelligence.