Lead Data Scientist - Machine Learning and Gen AI

Description

United's Digital Technology team is comprised of many talented individuals all working together with cutting-edge technology to build the best airline in the history of aviation. Our team designs, develops and maintains massively scaling technology solutions brought to life with innovative architectures, data analytics, and digital solutions.

Job overview and responsibilities

The role of the Lead Data Scientist will collaborate with cross-functional teams that include the Digital Products & Analytics team, DT partners, subject matter experts (SMEs) and business stakeholders to lead the development and deployment of machine learning and Gen AI solutions while staying at the forefront of AI and ML advancements to provide expert consultation on latest ML techniques and technologies. This role offers the opportunity to provide strategic direction and leadership to a team of data scientists and apply advanced analytics and machine learning in a dynamic environment, influencing key business decisions and driving measurable impact across the company

The Data Science team within Digital Products & Analytics specializes in traditional machine learning and cutting-edge AI technologies like generative AI leveraging both structured (tabular) and unstructured data. Our work is centered on projects that enhance financial performance and operational efficiency, improve customer experiences, and support employee engagement.

• Solution Development:
  • Applies knowledge of data science, machine learning, data analysis, data visualization & deep learning techniques to assist in planning, delivering, providing analytical and/or mathematical modeling or streamlined processes for solving complex business problems and providing project updates to key clients / partners / stakeholders
  • Must have high energy, be self-motivated, and possess a positive attitude
• Planning and Execution:
  • Scope, size and plan DS project roadmaps with clear milestones, metrics and identify potential derailment factors
  • Drive end-to-end execution from incubation to production
  • Ability to put definition and structure around problems and projects
• Collaboration & Integration:
  • Collaborate with analytics, technology and business team members, business leaders and Digital Technology partners throughout the project lifecycle to Identify opportunities and align on and deploy ML/AI solutions to solve complex business problems
  • Develop and manage relationships with teams external to Ai, business leaders at Director/MD levels
• Innovation:
  • Propose and develop innovative solution approaches based on scientific research or empirical studies
  • Passionate about Machine Learning, Deep Learning & AI; and visionary for how it can be applied, with strong strategic/critical thinking and problem-solving skills to complement
  • Actively seeks opportunities to innovate by keeping up with the academic & industry research; help facilitate idea generation and share best practices and new findings with others
• Communications:
  • Helps create and deliver presentations for United leadership and external stakeholders
  • Lead or support status meetings and the frequent communication to key stakeholders at varying levels of United leadership
  • Ability to communicate complex concepts in a clear, precise, and actionable manner, through written and verbal presentation skills
  • Must exhibit written and spoken English fluency
• Mentorship and Development:
  • Coaching and mentoring team members on their development as well as for successful delivery of projects; assuring a high level of staff technical skills and knowledge Assist with talent acquisition and facilitates training as needed with reusable content and delivery of training sessions

Qualifications

What's needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Technology, Computer Science, Statistics, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Economics ore related field
• 4+ years experience in analytics/data science
• Proven track record of developing and implementing AI strategies at scale, solving identified business problems and achieving optimization in the product development and ML project lifecycle
• Highly proficient in Python, Tensorflow/PyTorch and query languages like SQL/Hive/Pig; with the ability to write high-performance, industry-grade, scalable code, and use of app development tools such as Docker, Django, Git, etc.
• Expertise of machine learning algorithms like Classification (binary/multi-class/multi-label), Regression (multi target regression), Clustering (KMeans, DBSCAN, Gaussian Mixture, etc.), Recommender Systems (Collaborative Filtering, Matrix Factorization, FPMC, FISM),
• Decision Trees, Random Forest, SVM, Boosting (XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost etc.), Computer Vision, NLP techniques (Word2Vec, Topic Modelling)
• Deep Learning architectures (Transformers, CNNs, RNNs, GRUs, LSTMs, GANs, etc.)
• Proficiency with open-source LLMs and tools such as GPT4, Anthropic Claude, Llama, vector databases, Hugging Face
• SaaS LLMs like LangChain, llama index, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock multimodal processing
• In-depth knowledge of Finetuning, Prompt Engineering (few-shot, zero-shot, one-shot), developing RAG pipelines and integrating Gen AI models with knowledge retrieval techniques for enhancing and optimizing performance for specific business tasks
• AWS Services, including Sagemaker, Redshift, Athena, and S3 & AWS data lake
• Experience working with models in production environments
• Strong analytical abilities, ability to define relevant measurements/metrics for a given problem
• Ability to work effectively with people at all levels in an organization
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Comfortable interacting with technical and non-technical audiences, including business and tech leadership
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer without sponsorship
• Successful completion of interview required to meet job qualification
• Reliable, punctual attendance is an essential function of the position

What will help you propel from the pack (Preferred Qualifications):

• Master's degree in Data Science, Business Analytics, Engineering, Technology, Computer Science, Statistics, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Economics
• Previous airline business experience and/or knowledge of airline industry data sources
• Prior experience leading and developing high performing teams with an emphasis on execution and through-put
• Ability to deliver high quality AI solutions in a matrix organization, thinking out of the box and solving hard problems while navigating through ambiguityAI Explainability methods, Adversarial Examples, and evaluation of AI algorithm performance
• Thought leadership when evaluating business problems and architecting a cohesive solution