Lead Data Scientist, Optimization Engineering

easyJet; Luton; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Annual bonus

25 days holiday

Pension scheme

Life assurance

Flexible benefits package

Job summary

easyJet is seeking a Principal Data Scientist to lead an optimization engineering team focused on disruption management and crew rostering. You will translate complex operational problems into scalable software and optimisation solutions, partnering with product, OR and stakeholder teams.

The role blends people leadership with hands-on technical direction, across architecture, delivery, quality and reliability, and involves building observability and scalable data pipelines in a hybrid, 40-60%

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading software engineering teams delivering production-grade systems with solver technology.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals including system design, distributed systems, APIs and testing.
• Experience building optimisation, scheduling or decision-support apps with constraint-based reasoning.
• Knowledge of MILP, constraint programming or heuristics and their impact on product design.
• Hands-on programming in Python/Java/C#/C++ and ability to review code quality.
• Experience integrating and operating optimisation components (solver orchestration, models, runtime configuration).
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross-functional team of engineers and OR/data science specialists.
• Own technical direction for disruption and crewing optimization products.
• Integrate solvers (e.g., Gurobi) and ensure model performance and explainability.
• Set engineering practices: CI/CD, testing, incident response and release management.
• Collaborate with product to shape roadmaps and define measurable outcomes.
• Build observability and manage latency, throughput and cost across environments.
• Contribute hands-on when needed while enabling the team to deliver.

Skills

People leadership

Solver technology

Software engineering fundamentals

MILP/constraint programming

Python/Java/C#/C++

APIs / microservices

Communication with stakeholders

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Math/OR

Tools

Gurobi

CPLEX

SQL

Docker

Job description

easyJet is seeking a Principal Data Scientist to lead an optimization engineering team focused on disruption management and crew rostering. You will translate complex operational problems into scalable software and optimisation solutions, partnering with product, OR and stakeholder teams.

The role blends people leadership with hands-on technical direction, across architecture, delivery, quality and reliability, and involves building observability and scalable data pipelines in a hybrid, 40-60%