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# Principal Product Data Scientist - Operations Delivery Intelligence

- **Company:** British Airways
- **Location:** London, UK
- **Experience:** Experienced
- **Salary:** £67,676.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Automation of Tests, Software Quality, Code Review, Continuous Integration, Python (Programming Language), Machine Learning, Software Engineering, Management of Software Versions, Data Logging, Data Ingestion, Deep Learning, Technical Debt, Git, Build Management, Software Version Control, Data Pipelines
- **Published:** August 23, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/details/5853010677

## About the Role

* 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)

## Description

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


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