Senior Analyst - Data Science and Operational Research

Location: VHQ, Crawley. With 3 days on site in line with our hybrid working model 
Contract type: Permanent 
Hours: 37.5 per week, Monday to Friday 
Closing date: Tuesday, 29th September 2026 

In a nutshell

Are you a data scientist who turns models into measurable business impact? 
At Virgin Atlantic, we’re looking for a Senior Data Scientist to design, build, and productionise machine-learning solutions that shape how we fly, plan, and delight our customers.

You’ll own the full project lifecycle, from defining the business problem and exploring the data to deploying, monitoring, and continuously improving models in production. Your work will directly influence operations, scheduling, and customer experiences, powering decisions that keep Virgin Atlantic ahead of the curve.

As an important member of our team you’ll also help define our data-science best practices, and champion a culture that values experimentation, collaboration, and delivery excellence.

Day to day

• Lead end-to-end ML and optimisation projects, from concept through deployment and post-launch performance analysis.
• Build, test, and refine predictive and prescriptive models that deliver tangible business outcomes.
• Collaborate with data engineers and ML engineers to design robust pipelines integrated with CI/CD workflows, ensuring models are reproducible, version-controlled, and continuously deployed with confidence.
• Implement monitoring and retraining frameworks to maintain model performance and governance over time.
• Contribute to our internal ML frameworks and tooling, streamlining how we experiment, validate, and deploy models at scale.
• Partner with stakeholders across the airline to translate complex analytical results into clear, actionable recommendations.

• Stay curious; keep up with developments in ML, GenAI, and responsible-AI practices, bringing new ideas to how we innovate with data.

  
  

About you

You’re an experienced, impact-driven data scientist who has seen multiple projects through the full lifecycle, from Jupyter notebook to production API. You combine deep technical expertise with commercial understanding and thrive on collaboration.

You’ll bring:

• Proven experience delivering applied machine-learning projects in production.
• Proven record of deploying and maintaining ML models through CI/CD pipelines
• Advanced proficiency in Python (pandas, scikit-learn, PySpark) and SQL.
• Demonstrable experience with ML lifecycle tooling such as MLflow and Databricks.
• Strong understanding of testing, version control, containerisation, and monitoring.
• A degree, PHD or post-doc experience in a quantitative discipline such as statistics, mathematics, computer science, or a related field.

Nice to have:

Experience applying GenAI or NLP models to real-world business problems.

Accessibility and inclusion

We’re committed to making our recruitment process accessible. If you need reasonable adjustments or additional support, you can let us know in your application.

If you’d prefer to speak to someone directly before or during your application, interview or assessment, please contact our recruitment team at [email protected].

We know every role and candidate is different, so we’ll discuss the adjustments available for the role and at each stage of recruitment, and how best to support you.

At Virgin Atlantic, we’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from everyone. Whatever your background, identity, experience or perspective, we’d love to hear from you.