Senior Specialist - Ancillary Product Optimization

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

Becoming the best airline is an adventure. And our Pricing & Revenue Management team is providing fuel for that journey by ensuring that we maximize our ticket revenue on every single flight across our network – both domestically and internationally – while giving our customers various product offerings for their travel. By analyzing market trends and forecasting consumer demand, this team works hard to ensure we are selling the right number of tickets at the right price to optimize our revenue and run a profitable airline.

Job overview and responsibilities

As a Senior Specialist, you will be charged with day-to-day execution of our pricing optimization program, improving revenue performance and customer satisfaction for United’s ancillary portfolio. Leveraging a blend of expertise in statistical modeling, machine learning, and project management, you will guide development of new technologies to elevate our business. You will have the opportunity to directly influence strategy and investment for high-margin ancillary products, improve customers’ flight experience, and impact United's bottom line.

Cross-functional coordination of Ancillary’s next-generation pricing initiatives

• Drive incremental revenue through cross-functional development of pricing strategy and technology
• Serve as an expert to external teams on pricing strategy and its intersection with crossfunctional initiatives
• Properly validate models, conclusions, and methodologies throughout the process
• Identify opportunities to improve existing models and workflows, and the new data or technologies needed to do so
• Support the Product Lead – Ancillary Product Optimization in administration of overall Ancillary Pricing initiatives

Project Management & Communication

• Coordinate efforts with Ancillary’s internal pricing, analytics, and development teams to deliver actionable business intelligence and tool enhancements that deliver impact to United’s ancillary revenue.
• Own one or more workstreams related to development of pricing technologies (ex. data engineering, analyst UI development, etc.)
• Develop executive-grade materials for stakeholders of all levels
• Capably explain technical concepts to less-technical collaborators

Apply Data Science Methodologies to Business Problems

• Function as internal expert on modeling applied to Ancillary Pricing, learning about and educating others on new methodologies as required
• Participate in the data science lifecycle, from identifying an innovation opportunity to delivering actionable insights
• Interface with partner teams’ machine learning use cases to assess Ancillary impact, advocating for optimized business outcomes

Note: This position provides a hybrid work arrangement including approximately 50% of the time spent working onsite at our Chicago office location and 50% remotely.

Qualifications

What’s needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Data Science, Operations Research, Statistics, Economics, or other quantitative discipline
• 2+ years of related experience
• Strong passion to solve business problems with data
• Analytical mindset, quantitative orientation required with strong knowledge of database querying languages (SQL, Python, etc.)
• Experience with Python for data preparation and model training, validation, and deployment
• Experienced in analyzing complex, high volume data from various sources to identify patterns and relationships
• Self-motivated – If you don’t know the answer, you’ll reach out and find somebody who does
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer without sponsorship
• Successful completion of interview required to meet job qualification
• Reliable, punctual attendance is an essential function of the position

What will help you propel from the pack (Preferred Qualifications):

• 
  Familiarity with airlines and ancillary products
• Experience with Optimization frameworks and tools (ex. CPLEX)
• Experience with Revenue Management practices and demand forecasting for perishable services
• Experience with statistical modeling, statistical inference
• Experience in Airline Merchandising, Revenue Management, Management Consulting, or similar commercially-focused roles

The base pay range for this role is $81,795.00 to $106,602.00.
The base salary range/hourly rate listed is dependent on job-related, factors such as experience, education, and skills. This position is also eligible for bonus and/or long-term incentive compensation awards.


You may be eligible for the following competitive benefits: medical, dental, vision, life, accident & disability, parental leave, employee assistance program, commuter, paid holidays, paid time off, 401(k) and flight privileges.


United Airlines is an equal opportunity employer. United Airlines recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical ability, age, veteran status and other protected status as required by applicable law. Equal Opportunity Employer - Minorities/Women/Veterans/Disabled/LGBT.


We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions. Please contact [email protected] to request accommodation.