Principal Product Data Scientist: Production ML & Optimisation

British Airways; Greater London; On-site; GBP 64,000 - 104,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Staff travel benefits

Discounted airfares

Job summary

British Airways, a leading national carrier, seeks a Principal Product Data Scientist for the Operations Delivery Intelligence division. You will own production-grade DS products, lead end-to-end delivery, and drive data-driven optimisation across operations, using Python and modern ML tooling.

The role emphasizes collaboration, scalability and clear stakeholder communication. You will join ODI squads to build industrialised decision-support software that improves operational outcomes, with

Qualifications

• Expert capability in applied ML, optimisation and operational research techniques.
• Strong Python expertise with production-quality data science software delivery.
• Experience with cloud platforms and modern ML tooling.
• Solid software engineering discipline including testing, CI/CD and version control.
• Ability to structure complex business and technical problems and propose pragmatic solutions.
• Clear communication across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Collaborative working style with continuous improvement focus.
• Systems-thinking mindset with attention to detail.
• Curiosity, resilience and adaptability in fast-moving environments.
• Masters or 6+ years in data science/ML/OR or equivalent industry experience.
• 4-6 years working on production ML or optimisation software at scale.
• Experience in developing industrialised software, especially DS/ML software products.
• Experience in relevant domains (transportation, airlines, operations, networks).

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical owner of one or more production-grade DS product codebases.
• Lead end-to-end delivery of decision-support software across the full product lifecycle.
• Understand complex operational problems and identify data-driven optimisation opportunities.
• Drive modelling and system design decisions balancing time, behaviour, debt and value.
• Prototype and deliver industrialised ML/optimisation models in Python.
• Build robust data ingestion, cleaning and processing pipelines.
• Implement orchestration pipelines and CI/CD deployment processes.
• Ensure software quality through logging, error handling and testing.
• Harden algorithms against edge cases and quantify product adoption.
• Engage with stakeholders to gather requirements and feedback.
• Contribute to feature prioritisation and roadmaps.
• Support integration of decision-support products into operations.
• Communicate modelling approaches and results clearly to audiences.
• Mentor junior team members and contribute to agile ways of working.

Skills

Applied ML & optimisation

Production-grade data science

Python programming

CI/CD & testing discipline

Stakeholder communication

Problem structuring

Mentoring teammates

Agile working

Education

Masters in data science / ML / OR or 6+ years equivalent

6+ years production ML/optimisation experience

Tools

Python

Git

CI/CD

Cloud

ODI

Machine Learning

Network

Support

Job description

British Airways, a leading national carrier, seeks a Principal Product Data Scientist for the Operations Delivery Intelligence division. You will own production-grade DS products, lead end-to-end delivery, and drive data-driven optimisation across operations, using Python and modern ML tooling.

The role emphasizes collaboration, scalability and clear stakeholder communication. You will join ODI squads to build industrialised decision-support software that improves operational outcomes, with