Job Description

12 month contract-to-hire based on performance. Backfilling a full-time employee who just left.

Our Fortune 500 Airline client has been an innovator in air travel for almost a hundred years and with a rich history under our belts, we look toward the future and want to make sure we are ready for the exciting emerging technologies coming around the corner.

The airline has created a unique innovation hub within the airline called Airshop, and our mission is to help protect and accelerate innovation so that United can see around corners for industry advantage. We have vision and drive for solving problems not many yet see, disrupting the status quo within the entire travel journey, and creating scalable solutions to provide positive results.

Our dedicated team of technologists and researchers work with leaders across the company, external partners, and targeted customers to incubate and deliver breakthrough ideas and drive towards “the next best thing” in the industry. We provide value for the airline through keeping a pulse on the latest technology trends, providing consult to internal stakeholders, and creating an atmosphere that promotes ideation and R&D. Our goal is to bring fresh insights and innovations to our internal operations and systems as well as to improve the overall customer journey and experience - discovering opportunity and removing obstacles are the soul and guiding principles of Airshop.

Airshop is unique blend of inspiration, collaboration, tenacity, and creativity and we’re looking for someone with these ingredients to help drive the vision of the hub and lab forward.

You have:

• The ability to drive the spirit of “think it, model it, test it, best it” – you are passionate about your approach to bringing scalable technology innovation to the market with the necessary facilitation skills and entrepreneurial mindset to help us grow Airshop
• The technical skill set to understand the “under the hood” of most emerging technologies such as AI/ML, Ambient Intelligence (IoT/IoE), Robotics/Autonomous Vehicles, Biometrics/Digital ID, and Virtualization/Simulation/Metaverse among the top
• A good bead on the latest trends in tech and geek-out over what you just discovered, able to provide assessments of its potential impact and opportunity for your colleagues
• A “can do” attitude and consider yourself a perpetual student of life and a problem solver – savvy enough to enable internal and external transformation of existing thoughts and processes
• Excellent interpersonal, communication and presentation skills that generates consensus and buy-in – you respectfully challenge, provide fresh insight, and help your colleagues see the future through collaborative efforts.
• Ability to research, organize data, document ideation and process, and then express/present a potential new idea or solution to drive consensus, buy-in, and excitement – you are an expert in employing collaboration as a tool to “get it done”

Responsibilities:

• Drive and support vision for innovation project stack and be a labs and tech innovation ambassador from a content, knowledge, and offerings perspective
• Facilitate Lab and Tech Innovation engagement opportunities and help shape value propositions, project proposals, and engagement roadmaps, advisory sessions, proof of concepts, prototypes, pilots and more.
• Identify, analyze and expose potential opportunities for new and emerging technologies for the airline
• Provide emerging technology and company evaluations and assessments, and present their potential with practical applications to multiple stakeholders and partners
• Build, negotiate and maintain a partner network with 3rd party vendors
• Provide adhoc support to the Lab Lead through the development of research, executive updates and POC documentation
• Collaborate closely with your Airshop team and other colleagues to drive a holistic vision and presence for the future of United

Required:

• Real-world experience in either Solutions Engineering, Technology Product Management, or Client Facing Architecture Development
• Experience working with Fortune 500 fast paced clients
• Motivated to call a client their long-term home
• Bachelor’s degree
• 10+ years overall relevant experience. 4-6+ years of specific experience working in emerging technologies and/or tech innovation
• Strong organization and time management skills
• High degree of independent thinking, but with the ability to influence others

Preferred Skills:

• Understanding of and experience with proof-of-concept development, product management, and Agile development processes including how to create requirements (writing code is not necessary)
• Experience with implementation of new ideas and technologies within matrix, multinational operations organizations – in rational and scalable ways
• High-level knowledge of the application and the potential for autonomous and electrified vehicles, robotics for operational efficiency, VR/AR/XR/MR, location-based services and tracking technology, mesh networks, IoT solutions and edge-compute, including smart-city technologies
• Understanding of a variety of technologies and platforms such as cloud-based solutions (AWS/Azure), immersive reality (Unity, Unreal Engine, NVIDIA Omniverse), computer vision and AI/ML models for identification and tracking, front end and back-end stacks (.NET, JAVA, Kubernetes, Angular, JSON, etc.).

RECRUITING NOTES

• The unicorn is someone with an industrial engineering background who geeks out on emerging tech and can pivot between tech assessment, running R&D or POCs and managing development pods.
• This should NOT be a technical project management person (PMP or SixSigma certification is a nice to have but not role-critical)
• I’d stay away from typical product owners, as they are more focused on the implementation of vision and solutions vs. their assessment of potential and scalable application – look for Product Manager, Director, Lead or Solutions Manager – this is someone who has worked their way from implementation into solution design and creation
• My guess, this role is better suited for someone who has experience being a customer-facing technical sales engineer or architect for a technology-solutions company
• Engineering lead, deep “nerds” are great, but this role needs to have business acumen and grasp of the technology zeitgeist and the governmental/business realities of chasing the next big thing – they need to be able to push limits but understand where it won’t be feasible based on the business and/or available resources
• This person should have experience delivering hardware and software solutions in multiple industries to be successful – someone in automation software for financial or health probably not ideal (as an example)
• Bonus if they come from an accelerator, innovation lab (think UP Partners and Labs, Google X Labs or something similar) – even Accenture Innovation lab would be good
• More importantly, this is “lead by example servant leader” and not “let me tell you what to do” – needs to generate buy-in, consensus, and collaborate on solutioning.
• This person should not need workpermit support, be located permanently in the Chicago area, with the ability to travel between Chicago and Arlington Heights.