Lead AI Engineer

Jeppesen ForeFlight is hiring a Lead AI Engineer to join our RADAR (Reporting, Analytics, Data, AI& Research) team. This is the team’s first strategic ML engineering hire, and you’ll play afoundational role in shaping how we apply reproducible statistical programming, analyticsautomation, and GenAI to solve real business problems across Finance, Customer Success,Revenue Operations, Accounting, and Product.You will design and build end-to-end machine learning pipelines, extract information from structuredand unstructured sources (PDFs, disparate systems, scanned documents), and serve as a technicalmentor who elevates the analytical capabilities of the broader team. This role blends deep appliedstatistics with modern analytics and ML engineering practices. We’re looking for someone who canmove fluidly between exploratory analysis and SQL deep dives, production-grade modeling, andTeaching Others How To Do The Same.Key Responsibilities Design, build, and maintain reproducible end-to-end machine learning pipelines formultivariate regression and classification tasks using frameworks such as R’s tidymodelsand/or Python’s scikit-learn. Apply gradient boosting methods (XGBoost, LightGBM) and ensemble approaches (randomforests), among other ML and deep learning algorithms, to high-impact business problems. Implement rigorous data pre-processing, feature engineering, hyperparameter optimization(including space-filling designs), and post-processing techniques such as probabilitycalibration. Build and deploy GenAI-enabled information extraction workflows including OCR, namedentity recognition (NER), NLP, and custom prompting schemas to pull structured data fromPDFs, scanned contracts, and other unstructured documents across systems. Deploy trained model objects and workflows into production environments using Databricks,APIs, SQL (for in-database inference using frameworks like Orbital), or containerizedservices. Develop and deliver upskilling content, tutorials, and hands-on workshops for internalRADAR team members and extended data scientists at Jeppesen ForeFlight covering gitand version control, scripting in R and Python, boosting productivity with GenAI tools, andcore data science concepts. Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to translate ambiguous business questions intowell-scoped analytical projects, and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical audiences. Contribute to the team’s standards for reproducible, version-controlled analytical work.Basic Qualifications 5-10 years of applied experience in data science, machine learning, and/or quantitativeanalytics. Strong proficiency in R and Python for statistical modeling, ML, and API pipelinedevelopment. Hands-on experience building supervised learning models (regression, classification) usingframeworks such as scikit-learn, tidymodels, XGBoost, Stan, or similar. Demonstrated understanding of the full modeling lifecycle: data pre-processing, featureengineering, hyperparameter tuning, model evaluation, calibration, and deployment. Experience with SQL and working against large-scale data warehouses or analyticaldatabases. Familiarity with NLP, text extraction, or document processing techniques (OCR, NER, orsimilar). Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complexanalytical work to non-technical stakeholders. Bachelor’s degree in Mathematica, Statistics, Computer Science, Economics, or a relatedquantitative field. Master’s degree preferred.Preferred Qualifications ML Frameworks & Workflow Design: Experience designing deterministic, reproducible MLworkflows using tidymodels (R) and/or scikit-learn (Python) pipelines, including space-fillingexperimental designs for hyperparameter optimization. Modern Data Tools: Experience with Apache Arrow, DuckDB, or Polars for high-performance in-memory data processing and ETL. Cloud & Compute Platforms: Experience with Databricks (mlflow, notebooks, UnityCatalog, Spark) or similar cloud-based ML platforms. R Ecosystem: Proficiency with tidyverse, DBI, odbc, dbplyr, Shiny, and ellmer. GenAI & Agentic Tools: Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as ClaudeCode, Codex, Cline, etc., for accelerating analytical and engineering workflows. CI/CD & Version Control: Experience with git-based CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI/CD orGitHub Actions) for automated testing, model validation, Quarto renderings, deploymentworkflows, etc.. IDE Proficiency: Comfortable working in VS Code, RStudio, or Positron (JetBrains DataGripa plus). Teaching & Mentorship: Track record of developing training materials, leading workshops,or mentoring junior analysts and data professionals. Applied Statistics: Graduate-level coursework or professional experience in Bayesianmethods, mixed effects models, survival analysis, experimental design, time series analysis,and/or pre-training transformers for event sequence problems. Cross-Industry Versatility: Experience working across multiple business domains (finance,healthcare, operations, etc.) and adapting analytical approaches to varied problem types.Summary Pay RangeAbout Jeppesen ForeFlightJeppesen ForeFlight is a leading provider of innovative aviation software solutions, serving theCommercial, Business, Military, and General Aviation sectors globally. Combining Jeppesen’s 90-year legacy of accurate aeronautical data with ForeFlight’s expertise in cutting-edge aviationtechnology, the company delivers an integrated suite of tools designed to enhance safety, improveoperational efficiency, and sharpen decision-making.