Senior Developer - Operations Research

Achieving our goals starts with supporting yours. Grow your career, access top-tier health and wellness benefits, build lasting connections with your team and our customers, and travel the world using our extensive route network.

Come join us to create what’s next. Let’s define tomorrow, together.

Description

Job overview and responsibilities

As a Senior Developer (L4) in the Digital Technology team at United Airlines, you will play a pivotal role in designing, developing, and implementing advanced Operations Research models and optimization systems that enhance airline network planning and scheduling.
You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Operations Research specialists, software engineers, and business stakeholders, to build scalable mathematical models and integrate them into enterprise-grade airline platforms. Your work will directly improve aircraft utilization, scheduling efficiency, connectivity, and cost optimization across a global airline network.
The ideal candidate has strong expertise in optimization, mathematical modeling, and large-scale system development, with hands-on experience building Operations Research solutions for complex real-world scheduling and planning problems as well as deep programming skills.

As a Senior Developer – Operations Research at United Airlines, you will:
• Be a member of the product development team responsible for designing and developing new and existing applications supporting airline network planning and scheduling solutions.
• Build and implement high-quality Operations Research (OR) or ML models following software engineering best practices.
• Develop mathematical programming models, including linear programming, mixed-integer programming, nonlinear optimization, or ML/ statistical models, to solve complex airline operational problems.
• Work closely with engineering teams to integrate optimization models into applications and digital platforms.
• Develop optimization solutions considering constraints such as aircraft allocation, connectivity, airport slot constraints, availability, and operational cost efficiency.
• Solve large-scale optimization problems using CPLEX and similar commercial solvers or Extensive experience designing, training, and operationalizing machine learning solutions, including LightGBM and other gradient boosting frameworks, in large-scale enterprise environments with high-volume data and business-critical decision-making processes.
• Collaborate with Operations Research specialists and stakeholders to translate business requirements into analytical and algorithmic solutions.
• Analyze model performance and provide recommendations to improve operational efficiency and decision-making outcomes.
• Continuously enhances optimization model efficiency, scalability, and robustness through research-driven improvements.
• Production support.

This position is offered on local terms and conditions. Expatriate assignments and sponsorship for employment visas, even on a time-limited visa status, will not be awarded. This position is for United Airlines Business Services Pvt. Ltd - a wholly owned subsidiary of United Airlines Inc.

Qualifications

What’s needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Operations Research, Mathematics or industrial engineering
• 4+ years of experience in applied Operations Research, optimization, decision analysis, or mathematical modeling.
• 4+ years of experience working with commercial optimization software such as IBM ILOG CPLEX, Gurobi, or Machine Learning and statistical modeling.
• 8+ years of experience and strong programming skills in Python or Julia.
• Knowledge of C++ is preferred.
• Very good knowledge of Linux, shell scripting and software development process.
• Experience with Cloud environment (AWS preferred)
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Airline domain knowledge is an added advantage.
• Experience working in fast-paced, optimization-driven, or research-oriented environments.