Hello. We’re Virgin Australia. We’re the airline that’s always done things a little different. Our way. The Virgin way. We’re on a mission to make flying better than ‘nice’. And to do that, it takes a team of talented people who are passionate about customer experience, doing the right thing always, with a focus on safety – in the air, on the ground and in our workplaces. A team who values real diversity and inclusion, in a big brand with big ambitions. 

With millions of customer interactions across our ecosystem and a uniquely rich dataset spanning customer behaviour, travel and partner engagement, data plays a central role in how we personalise experiences and make decisions at scale.

About the role:

We’re looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join our Advanced Analytics Centre of Excellence. In this role, you’ll build, deploy and scale machine learning and experimentation solutions that directly shape loyalty strategy, customer decisioning and personalisation, partner performance, and customer experience across the Velocity ecosystem.

You’ll work in a cross functional environment alongside Insight Analysts, Analytics Engineers and business stakeholders, leading complex problem spaces end to end from framing and experiment design through to production deployment and measurable business impact, embedding models into production systems that power large scale customer and member decisioning.

You’ll report to the Manager, Personalisation Analytics and Data Science and join a team with established models in production, including recommender systems, propensity and regression models, supported by an evolving MLOps framework built on Databricks and AutoML. These models are actively used to power large scale customer and member decisioning across the Velocity program.

You’ll play a key role in shaping and owning the data science roadmap, working closely with the manager to prioritise initiatives and ensure delivery against commitments.

As Velocity accelerates its AI transformation journey, you’ll partner closely with our AI teams to identify, develop and embed AI driven capabilities into scalable products and decisioning frameworks.

In this role you will:

• Drive the data science roadmap for your domain, identifying and prioritising high impact opportunities aligned to business objectives and ensuring delivery against agreed commitments
• Design, build and deploy statistical and machine learning models using Python and Spark within a modern, scalable data and ML platform, including Databricks, with a focus on deploying models into production environments supporting batch and increasingly near real time decisioning
• Lead the end to end lifecycle of models, from problem framing and feature engineering through to deployment, monitoring and optimisation
• Develop and enhance recommender systems, propensity models and predictive models that drive commercial outcomes
• Define and evolve experimentation frameworks (A/B and beyond) to inform decision making, measure causal impact and continuously optimise outcomes
• Own the evolution of MLOps practices within data science, driving improvements in model deployment, monitoring and lifecycle management in partnership with engineering teams
• Build scalable data products and reusable decisioning frameworks
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship, raising the bar for data science across the team
• Translate complex analyses into clear, actionable insights using effective data visualisation and storytelling for both technical and non technical audiences
• Influence senior stakeholders and partner closely with analytics, engineering and business teams to embed data-driven decision making into workflows
• Ensure all work aligns with Virgin Australia Group’s safety, security and resilience standards

You’ll be great in this role if you have:

• A degree in a quantitative discipline such as Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics or Computer Science (PhD desirable)
• Typically 5+ years of experience building and deploying machine learning models in a commercial environment
• Proven experience leading end to end data science initiatives with measurable business impact
• Proficiency in Python, with strong SQL skills and experience working with large and complex datasets (Spark desirable)
• Experience working with modern data and ML platforms such as Databricks and/or AWS
• A strong foundation in statistics, experimental design and causal inference
• Experience shaping or working within MLOps frameworks and production ML environments
• Strong communication and data visualisation skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive data-driven decisions with measurable business impact
• Demonstrated ability to operate in ambiguous environments and translate business problems into scalable data science solutions
• Curiosity, ownership and a drive to automate and scale solutions
• Experience in loyalty, travel or consumer products (nice to have)

Why this role is interesting:

• Work on production grade machine learning systems that power customer decisioning at scale
• Build on an existing ML and MLOps ecosystem with modern tooling (Databricks, AutoML)
• Own and shape the data science roadmap and drive delivery of high impact initiatives
• Help scale experimentation, personalisation and AI driven decisioning across Velocity

Candidates must be Sydney based, or willing to relocate.

What you’ll get from us 

We’re committed to looking after you, with some of the best benefits and conditions in the industry – including (but not limited to): 

• Discounted flights for you and your loved ones (plus $1000 travel credits per year) 
• Flexible and hybrid working, with a mix of working from home and the office 
• ‘Dress for Your Day’ – wear whatever makes you feel great for the type of work you do and the day you have ahead of you 
• Discounts on travel insurance, lounge membership, car hire, accommodation, and experiences worldwide 
• Cheaper hospitality, retail, technology, beauty and wellness services 
• Free counselling and online tools to support your physical, mental, social and financial health. 

When everyone is included, everyone wins 

We’re all individuals. And we love that. That’s why we encourage applications from Indigenous Australians, people with disability, those from diverse cultural backgrounds, our friends in the LGBTIQ+ community, and anyone else who wants to join us. 

Ready to apply? 

Working at Virgin Australia isn't just a job. It's a passion that becomes part of you. Are you ready to join us? Get ready for a rewarding experience. Apply today!