Principal Data Scientist - Finance & Transformation

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.

• As a senior leader within the Data & AI function, reporting to the Head of Data Delivery, the Principal Data Scientist is accountable for the end-to-end delivery and lifecycle management of high-value data science products or initiatives that support or automate decision-making across critical business areas.
• Operating within Agile cross-functional squads, they lead teams to scope, design, build, deploy and maintain scalable, production-ready solutions - including predictive models, optimisation engines, and decision-support tools - that integrate seamlessly with business processes and technical infrastructure.
• The Principal Data Scientist delivers in line with the strategic direction for data science delivery, ensures model compliance and ethical responsibility, and drives continuous improvement in team capabilities and ways of working.
• They also line manage and coach others to achieve their full potential, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation and impact.
• Manages and coaches data science teams to deliver a portfolio of data science products from scoping to delivery
• Scopes and documents ill-defined client needs and frames data science solutions that align with business goals
• Responsible for the quality and timely delivery of the data science products for an area of the business
• Reporting on team key performance indicators
• Acquires, processes and manipulates complex and large raw data to ensure high-quality inputs for models
• Designs, builds and trains data science products such as business models, predictive analytics tools, recommender systems, natural language processing, anomaly detection, forecasts, optimisation models and decision support systems
• Works with Digital teams to product ionise models and deliver application front ends
• Translates results in to actionable recommendations
• Provides guidance to stakeholders on how models created can improve business outcomes
• Works within cross-functional business and Digital teams
• Oversees management, improvements to and decommissioning of existing data science products for business area to ensure they are valuable, feasible and usable
• Monitors industry trends and advancements in data science
• Ensures adherence to published frameworks in team
• Ensures model compliance & ethical responsibility in team
• Ensures best practice is followed in their team
• Line manages others to achieve full potential
• Provides ad hoc team cover on an exceptional basis
• Contributes to conversations on feature prioritisation and roadmap, with an understanding of the trade-off between speed vs. long-term value
• Communicates feature and modelling approach, trade-offs, and results with the internal team and business stakeholders
• Using Git-versioning best practices for version control
• Contributing and reviewing pull-requests and product / technical documentation
• Giving input on prioritization, team process improvements,…