Senior Data Scientist - Operations Research

United Airlines - Chicago, IL

Full-time

Chicago, IL

Air Transportation

About the position

The position involves providing mathematical modeling and analysis services to support critical financial, operational, and strategic planning decisions at United Airlines. The role focuses on developing quantitative analysis methods, leveraging operations research and machine learning to solve complex business problems, and delivering actionable insights to enhance business decisions. The candidate will work collaboratively with project teams, build optimization models, and communicate findings effectively to management and clients.

Responsibilities

• Provides mathematical modeling and analysis services to support critical financial, operational, and/or strategic planning decisions.
• Engages in supporting project teams in value-added activities that generate practical solutions to complex business problems.
• Explores new business alternatives and drives improvement in business decisions.
• Develops the approach and methods to define and solve management problems through quantitative analysis and analytical models.
• Identifies, researches, or solves large complex problems using big data and operations research and machine learning principles.
• Leverages understanding of the business process to identify and implement operations research solutions that will result in significant bottom-line contributions.
• Builds and develops operations research/optimization mathematical model applications, and provides client support leveraging operations research knowledge.
• Participates in model design, prototype, and model development for several efforts that occur simultaneously, and interfaces with product delivery groups.
• Raises concerns when scope of analysis may not align with time available and can choose an appropriate scope of analysis to conduct balancing ROI to time available.
• Designs analytic plan/develop hypotheses to test; understands limitations of analysis (what it can and cannot be used for).
• Anticipates working team questions to data and approach.
• Identifies solution quality risks and on-time risks.
• Understands the business value, process, and expectations before focusing on choice of a technical solution.
• Understands the intuition behind the numbers (i.e. does it make sense?).
• Provides ongoing analytical services to client organizations.
• Communicates results to management and clients.
• Contributes deck content and builds the story for the deck with guidance to summarize findings.
• Develops and delivers presentations aligned with Ai standards.
• Speaks in a manner appropriate for working team and their level +1.
• Keeps informed about the latest analytical methods and research in the operations research and analytics fields.

Requirements

• Advanced degree (MS, or PhD or ABD) in Operations Research or other related quantitative discipline involving quantitative analysis and application of advanced operations research principles.
• Coursework or work experience with mathematical programming techniques.
• Coursework or work experience in model prototyping through use of optimization toolkit(s) including CPLEX, AMPL, or OPL.
• Coursework or work experience with C, C++, Java, R, Python, or other structured programming language.
• Good business, technical, verbal/written communication, presentation and sales skills.
• Adaptability to changing business environment.
• Good interpersonal skills and ability to interact with clients.
• Proficient with MS Office.
• Successful completion of interview required to meet job qualifications.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer without sponsorship.

Nice-to-haves

• Minor in computer science and/or formal advanced computer science coursework preferred.
• 2+ years of professional experience in analytical field.
• 1+ years of airline business experience.
• 1+ years designing and programming/coding data structures for large-scale computer models.
• Experience with Julia programming language.
• Knowledge of United/industry data sources.
• Structured programming for large-scale computer models.
• Demonstrated ability to create business value.

Benefits

• Health insurance
• Parental leave
• Space available travel