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:
Senior Product Data Scientist
You’ll be part of the Operations directorate, working within integrated operations product squads that build data‑driven decision‑support software. This area plays a critical role in improving operational performance by embedding advanced analytics, machine learning and optimisation into day‑to‑day operational decision‑making across the airline.
What you’ll do:
- Develop and embed industrialised decision‑support software using machine learning and optimisation techniques
- Act as the technical owner of one or more modules within a production‑grade data science product
- Understand operational business problems end‑to‑end and identify opportunities to optimise decisions using decision‑support tooling
- Conduct analysis and visualisation to identify valuable opportunities and assess trade‑offs between design and feature options
- Drive modelling and technical approach decisions, balancing implementation speed, runtime performance, technical debt and business value
- Rapidly prototype advanced machine learning and optimisation models in Python
- Deliver production‑grade machine learning and optimisation modules using software engineering best practice
- Build robust data ingestion, cleaning and processing pipelines
- Contribute to software orchestration and cloud‑based CI/CD deployment
- Drive system design decisions alongside software architects
- Ensure robustness through logging, error handling and automated testing
- Harden algorithms against operational and data edge cases
- Quantify adoption and value capture of decision‑support products
- Engage with business stakeholders to gather requirements and feedback
- Contribute to feature prioritisation and roadmap discussions
- Support integration of products into operational business processes
- Communicate modelling approaches, trade‑offs and results clearly to stakeholders
- Mentor junior team members
- Contribute to agile ways of working including Git version control, code reviews and delivery predictability
What you’ll bring to British Airways:
- Experience solving real‑world problems using applied machine learning, optimisation and operational research techniques
- Strong Python capability and experience with data science and optimisation libraries
- Experience delivering production‑quality data science software
- Familiarity with cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines and modern orchestration tooling
- Strong software engineering discipline including testing, logging and version control
- Ability to structure complex business and technical problems and propose pragmatic solutions
- Confidence communicating advanced technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences
- Systems‑thinking mindset with attention to detail
- Curious, proactive and resilient approach
- Collaborative working style with a strong focus on continuous improvement
- Commitment to delivering measurable business value
Your experience:
- Master’s degree or greater in data science, ML, or operational research, or 4+ years of highly relevant industry experience (required)
- 2+ 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.
