Medior Machine Learning Engineer

Introduction

We are looking for a Medior ML Engineer who will help us solve valuable business challenges for KLM’s Operations department, by building innovative data science and ML solutions.

You will be working alongside Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers of the Operation Decision Support (ODS) department. The core focus of ODS is to optimize processes concerning fleet, crew, and ground services. Our models aim to answer highly relevant questions such as:

• - How many meals are needed on board?
• - How much ground staff is needed and at what time?  
• - How many no-shows can we expect on this flight?
• - How much delay will a flight incur and how can we minimize the impact?

The answers to these questions directly influence the operations of KLM, which means plenty of opportunities to work on projects that truly save costs and/or increase revenue.

Besides contributing to these exciting projects, there are opportunities to:

• - Work on an innovation project in KickstartAI (kickstartai.nl);
• - Present your latest learnings at one of our Data Science Community events.

We are now looking to expand our Machine Learning capabilities. Do you want to see your model’s predictions in action the next time you take a flight?

What are you going to do?

As a ML Engineer you will work in a growing agile Machine Learning team, currently consisting of 5 ML Engineers, 5 Data Scientists and 2 Business Consultants / Product Owners. The team is fully incorporated in the department and our models will be supporting and advising on an operational and tactical level. Important aspects of your job on a day-to-day basis will be to:

• Work on prediction models, which are used in KLM live operations 24/7. These models help your colleagues to supply the meals onboard or do workforce planning in the terminals;
• Design, research and implement the entire ML pipeline, from retraining to model deployment and monitoring
• Continuously monitor and improve the productionized ML models
• As KLM is currently migrating to Google Cloud Platform, you will be one of the experts to help our cloud implementation become a success
• Oversee the data pipeline of ML models
• Work closely with data scientists and data engineers
• Share your greatest lessons at a Data Science Community event
• Have fun and enjoy while you are doing it!

You are also encouraged and expected to spend 15-20% of your time with us learning new things, doing research and developing yourself. You can do this by following courses, reading papers or doing cool hack projects with your colleagues. The projects you do in your 15-20% time must be related to your role, but don’t have to be related to the projects you normally work on.

Do you have what it takes to take KLM’s data-driven decision making to a higher level?

Where do you land?

You will be working in a hybrid way, partially from home and partially from the office at Schiphol East, where you can watch the airplanes take off and play some table tennis while your docker container is being built. We have flexible working hours and office days; hence we will find something that suits you.

You will be hired by the Data, OR & AI department, which will place you into one of the Data Science product teams in KLM (i.e. a matrix organization). The OR department currently comprises about 40 Data Science professionals in product teams across KLM, sharing knowledge, training and (social) events. Across all expertise, we are growing and in search of new talent so we can scale the AI capabilities at KLM.  

Your profile

We are looking for a motivated, enthusiastic, and proactive colleague with the necessary skills to solve the real business problems and provide value to KLM.
This position is for Medior level with at least 3 years of experience. 
We have found that people who match the following requirements are the ones who fit us best:

• Tech savvy with a feeling for logic, mathematics & statistics.
• Entrepreneurial, analytical, creative, and results-oriented.
• Well-versed in explaining technical solutions in layman’s terms.
• Eager to learn and stay up to date on state-of-the-art technologies related to machine learning.

The skills and experience you bring to the team:

• A Master’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Econometrics, or a related field.
• 3+ years of industry experience in software development.
• At least 1 year of experience working with Data Science/Machine Learning teams.
• Proven experience in developing MLOps pipelines, including deployment, monitoring, and retraining.
• Strong foundation in software engineering with expertise in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) principles and design patterns.
• Extensive experience in writing production-level Python code, including best practices in CICD, testing, and code optimization.
• Experience with at least one major Cloud provider.
• Experience with Git, Unix shell, REST APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, Kibana, Prometheus, Grafana, (py)Spark, SQL, Terraform and other relevant tools is an advantage.
• Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines is a plus.