Sr. Manager, Data Science

Overview

Join Our Team at Wheels Up

At Wheels Up, we're proud to be a global leader in on-demand private aviation. As one of the largest companies in the industry and a strategic partner of Delta Air Lines – we are committed to making private air travel safe, reliable, and enjoyable. With a diverse fleet of owned aircraft plus a global network of trusted charter operators, we offer our customers access to the right aircraft for their needs and the ability to fly on their terms.

 

And it doesn’t stop at private flights. Wheels Up also provides freight services, safety and security solutions, and managed services to individuals, businesses, government agencies, and more. Regardless of how, when or where you want to fly, our mission is simple; deliver a premium, personalized aviation experience for every customer.

Responsibilities

Role Overview: What You’ll Be Doing

In this role, you will lead a high-performing data science team to develop predictive and optimization models that improve fleet utilization, operational efficiency, and member experience. You will partner closely with Operations, Revenue Management, Product, and Engineering to translate complex aviation challenges into scalable, data-driven solutions. You will drive the end-to-end data science roadmap—from strategy and model development to deployment and measurable business impact.

 

Your Key Responsibilities (Essential Functions)

• Manage and mentor data scientists, ML engineers, and analysts.
• Drive team performance, career development, and hiring.
• Build a high-performing, collaborative data culture.
• Define the multi-year roadmap for analytics, ML, and optimization.
• Align with Engineering, Product, Operations, Revenue Management, and Finance.
• Prioritize projects based on business impact and organizational goals.
• Build Predictive and Prescriptive Models
• Drive Operational Efficiency Through ML/AI
• Lead Cross-Functional Data Initiatives

Qualifications

What You Bring to the Table: Education & Certification Requirements

We’re looking for someone who has a unique mix of experience, skills, and passion for what we do:

• Ph.D., M.S., or bachelor’s degree in economics, Statistics, Machine Learning, Operations Research, or other quantitative fields.
• Strong programming experience in production environments using Python 
• Comfortable with one or more modern solver libraries such as Gurobi or Xpress
• 7+ years of relevant data science experience
• 5+ years of people management experience, managing engineers
• Experience in partnering with product and program management teams
• Experience building complex software systems that have been successfully delivered to customers
• Experience with common engineering areas and architectural components around OR methodologies; for instance, relational DB's, cloud-computing environments, ETL and reporting/BI tools, etc. 
• Knowledge of professional software engineering practices & best practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations
• Ability to take a project from scoping requirements to the actual launch of the project
• Experience in communicating with users, other technical teams, and management to collect requirements, describe software product features, and technical designs
• Proven track record building high-performing software development teams
• Passionate about delivering the right things for your customers at very high quality

The Extras We Value (Preferred Requirements)

While not mandatory, here are some additional things that would make you stand out:

• Familiarity with flight operations, crew scheduling, maintenance planning, charter operations, or fleet management.
• Hands-on experience with:
• MLOps frameworks (SageMaker, Vertex AI, Databricks MLflow)
• Distributed computing (Spark, Ray)
• Real-time data pipelines (Kafka, Kinesis)
• Machine learning algorithms, deep learning frameworks
• Data pipelines, feature engineering, and large-scale data processing

What We Offer

Salary Range & Benefits

At Wheels Up, we believe in fair compensation based on experience, skills, and qualifications. The salary for this role ranges from $193,000 -$220,000, depending on a variety of factors. We don’t typically start individuals at the top of the salary range; your place within the range is based on what you bring to the table. Additionally, you may be eligible for a discretionary annual incent