Francisco Zenteno Smith
Senior Operations Research Consultant — American Airlines

Optimization, engineered like production software.

I'm Francisco Zenteno Smith. I transform legacy systems into production-grade decision-support software — bridging operations research rigor with software engineering discipline.

Capability

Legacy systems → production-grade software

Recognition

Silva Award — American Airlines, 2026

Artifact

SEFOP — open-source framework

github.com/sefop →
About

A decade bridging operations research and software engineering

Francisco Zenteno Smith

With a decade of experience applying operations research across airlines, retail, mining, cargo, and healthcare, I bridge two disciplines that are too often kept separate: mathematical optimization and software engineering. I'm equally effective as the deepest individual contributor on a hard problem or directing a team of engineers to deliver an end-to-end system.

At American Airlines, I build large-scale optimization systems that power flight operations — designed and shipped with the same engineering rigor as any production software, not treated as one-off research code.

I hold dual master's degrees in Computer Science (UC San Diego) and Industrial Engineering (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), and created SEFOP, an open-source framework for bringing software-engineering discipline to optimization programs. In 2026, I spoke at the Agentic Quality Summit in Atlanta on bridging operations research and production-grade engineering.

Operations Research Clean Architecture Optimization MIP / Metaheuristics Python · Java · C#
Open Source

SEFOP — Software Engineering Framework for Optimization

A framework for building optimization systems the way you'd build any production software: Clean Architecture, dependency injection, full test coverage, and CI/CD — not throwaway research scripts. Includes reference implementations across languages and a live, deployed demo.

See the full breakdown →
Experience

Where the work has happened

2024 — Present
Senior Operations Research Scientist
American Airlines

Led the year-long refactor of a legacy decision-support system, cutting technical debt 67% by teaching the team software-engineering principles.

2017 — 2020
Senior Data Scientist
SMU

Built a simulated-annealing metaheuristic that shipped a monthly cashier-scheduling system to production for 350 stores — without commercial optimization software.

2013 — 2016
Data Scientist
Shift Workforce Management

Designed a multi-objective staff-planning model reused across 20+ consultancies for enterprise clients.

Let's talk

The fastest way to reach me is LinkedIn.