Lead Principal Data Scientist, Production ML for Airline Ops in London

A career without limits. As the nation's flag carrier, we take great pride in connecting Britain with the world and the world with Britain. It's something we've been doing for over 100 years, ever since we launched the world's first international scheduled air service between London and Paris. This originality has been in our blood since day one. It's the spirit we share with the people that fly with us, our partners, and our colleagues. So, whether you are a reassuring voice on the end of a phone, a smile at the door, under a wing keeping the turbines spinning or landing us gently in far flung places, a job at British Airways is yours to make. We know great things can happen when you're inspired to think big and bring your ambition to work every day, which is why, at British Airways the sky is never the limit.

The role: Principal Product Data Scientist. You'll be part of the Operations Delivery Intelligence (ODI) directorate, working within integrated operations product squads to build and embed industrialised decision support software products. This area plays a critical role in improving operational outcomes by applying advanced machine learning and optimisation techniques to real world decision making challenges across the airline.

What you'll do:

• Act as the technical owner of one or more production grade data science product codebases
• Lead the end to end delivery of decision support software across the full product lifecycle
• Understand complex operational business problems end to end and identify opportunities for data driven optimisation
• Drive modelling and system design decisions, balancing implementation time, system behaviour, technical debt and business value
• Prototype, build and deliver industrialised machine learning and optimisation models in Python
• Design and build robust data ingestion, cleaning and processing pipelines
• Implement orchestration pipelines and CI/CD deployment processes
• Ensure software quality through logging, error handling and automated testing
• Harden algorithms against operational and data edge cases
• Quantify product adoption and value capture
• Engage with business stakeholders to gather requirements and feedback
• Contribute to feature prioritisation and roadmap discussions
• Support integration of decision support products into operational business processes
• Communicate modelling approaches, trade offs and results clearly to technical and business audiences
• Mentor and support junior team members
• Contribute to agile ways of working, including Git versioning, code reviews and delivery predictability

What you'll bring to British Airways:

• Expert capability in applied machine learning, optimisation and operational research techniques
• Strong Python expertise with experience delivering production quality data science software
• Experience working with cloud platforms and modern ML tooling
• Strong software engineering discipline including testing, CI/CD and version control
• Ability to structure complex business and technical problems and propose pragmatic solutions
• Clear communication skills across technical and non technical audiences
• Collaborative working style with a focus on continuous improvement
• Systems thinking mindset with attention to detail
• Curiosity, resilience and adaptability in fast moving environments
• Strong commitment to delivering measurable business value

Your experience:

• Master's degree or greater in data science, ML, or operational research, or 6+ years of highly relevant industry experience (required)
• 4-6 years working on production ML or optimization software products at scale (required)
• Experience in developing industrialized software, especially data science or machine learning software products (required)
• Experience in relevant business domains (transportation, airlines, operations, network problems) (preferred)

What we offer: We believe that all the people who work with us should feel valued for the part they play. It's one of the reasons our rewards go far beyond a competitive salary. From the day you join us, you'll get access to brilliant staff travel benefits including unlimited basic and premium standby tickets on British Airways flights. You'll also receive up to 30 discounted Hotline' airfares per year for yourself, friends, and family. At British Airways you'll have the chance to take on new challenges and move forward in a way that feels right for you. We encourage all those who work for us to consider opportunities right across our business to help you develop and progress. We never stand still, and we don't expect our people to either.

Inclusion & Diversity: At British Airways we all have a part to play in creating an inclusive place to work. Diverse representation among our people is really important to us and we recognise that all our colleagues are uniquely different and bring their own originality, creativity and identity to work. Inclusion and diversity is a key driver of innovation and we're committed to creating a culture where everyone feels that they can be themselves. We're looking for people from all backgrounds and cultures to join us and be a part of our journey to become a Better BA as we continue to connect Britain with the world and the world with Britain.