This position requires in-person collaboration up to five days a week. This arrangement is subject to change based on business requirements.
We are seeking a talented and experienced
Senior Data Scientist to join the Data Science & Strategic Insights team. If you are passionate about data, have a proven track record of solving complex problems, and want to contribute to meaningful projects, we encourage you to apply.
As a Senior Data Scientist at WestJet, you will play a crucial role in driving data-driven decision-making and delivering actionable insights. You will work collaboratively with cross-functional teams, including data engineers, product managers, and business stakeholders, to design, develop, and deploy advanced analytics and AI solutions.
Key Responsibilities:
- AI Strategy & Solution Design: Identify opportunities to apply machine learning, generative and agentic AI, and advanced analytics techniques to business challenges, ensuring solutions are aligned with organizational priorities and expected business outcomes.
- Advanced Analytics & Data Exploration: Conduct exploratory data analysis across structured and unstructured data sources to identify patterns, trends, risks, and opportunities that inform model development and AI solution design.
- Data Preparation & Feature Engineering: Prepare, transform, and engineer features from multiple structured and unstructured data sources to support model development, experimentation, and AI applications.
- Predictive & Prescriptive Modeling: Develop, train, and optimize statistical, machine learning, and AI models that improve decision-making by generating actionable insights and recommendations.
- LLM & Agentic AI Development: Design and prototype AI solutions using large language models, prompt and context engineering, embeddings, semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic workflows to augment employee productivity and business capabilities.
- Model Evaluation & Explainability: Evaluate model performance using appropriate statistical techniques and ensure outputs are explainable, interpretable, and actionable for business stakeholders.
- Communication & Executive Engagement: Communicate analytical findings and insights through effective storytelling, clear business narratives, compelling visualizations and executive-level presentations executive-ready insights in collaboration with the technical product owner.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with product owners, engineers, platform teams, visualization specialists and architects to ensure analytical solutions are technically feasible, scalable, interpretable, and aligned with business objectives.
- Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a subject matter expert in data science and AI by mentoring team members, sharing knowledge, evaluating emerging technologies, and advancing analytical best practices across the organization.
Experience and Qualifications:- Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline, combined with 6+ years of progressive experience in data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or advanced analytics.
- Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience using modern data science, machine learning, and AI libraries, frameworks, and development environments.
- Strong foundation in statistics, machine learning, and data science methodologies, including supervised and unsupervised learning, predictive modeling, experimentation, optimization, and statistical analysis.
- Demonstrated experience designing, developing, validating, and deploying statistical and AI/ML models within enterprise production environments.
- Hands-on experience developing Generative AI and Agentic AI solutions, including large language models (LLMs), prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, vector databases, semantic search, tool integration, and orchestration frameworks.
- Experience working within modern AI/ML development environments, including Git-based version control, CI/CD processes, MLOps frameworks, model lifecycle management, and collaborative software development practices that enable scalable and repeatable delivery of AI/ML solutions.
- Experience with model lifecycle management, including model monitoring, performance evaluation, data and concept drift detection, versioning, and retraining strategies to maintain long-term model accuracy and reliability.
- Experience translating analytical findings into actionable business insights through data visualization and storytelling, including the development of executive-ready decks and dashboards using tools such as Power BI or Streamlit.
- Experience working within modern cloud-based data platforms, preferably Snowflake.
- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills, with a demonstrated ability to influence decisions, navigate ambiguity, and communicate complex analytical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Nice to Have:
- A Master's and/or Ph.D. in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, or a related field.
- Formal generative and agentic AI training or certification.
- Prior experience working for an airline
The benefits of being a WestJetter:WestJet provides all WestJetters with a competitive total rewards package. On top of that, we offer:
- A fun and friendly culture with colleagues who work together to win
- Travel privileges for you and your family, effective from your start date
- Savings and Benefit programs that are flexible to meet your specific needs
Think we're a great fit? Apply now!
