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Nextdata

Senior AI Platform Engineer

5 day weekVery FlexibleHybrid · San Francisco, USA

Nextdata is looking for an experienced AI Platform Engineer for an initial three-month project focused on building and validating an AI-enabled data platform capability.

This is a hands-on implementation role. You will quickly ramp up on an existing project and build backend services, agent tools, APIs, and data integrations. The role has no customer-facing responsibilities and less emphasis on architecture than a principal-level position.

If successful, the project may continue and develop into a broader Nextdata product.

What You’ll Do

  • Quickly understand the existing codebase, requirements, and technical direction.

  • Build backend services, AI agents, tools, and APIs for governed data access.

  • Implement MCP-compatible endpoints or similar agent interfaces.

  • Integrate SQL, documents, APIs, metadata, semantic models, and vector search.

  • Build retrieval, tool selection, context construction, and grounded response flows.

  • Add access controls, policy enforcement, audit logging, tests, and observability.

  • Deliver a reliable, documented system within the three-month project scope.

What We’re Looking For

  • Strong experience with backend systems, data platforms, or distributed systems.

  • Practical experience building agentic AI applications using LangChain, LangGraph, or similar frameworks.

  • Experience with RAG, retrieval, semantic search, tool calling, and multi-step agent workflows.

  • Strong Python and API development skills.

  • Experience with SQL, documents, metadata systems, and vector search.

  • Familiarity with MCP or similar agent interfaces.

  • Understanding of access control, policies, lineage, data quality, PII protection, and auditability.

  • Ability to become productive quickly in an unfamiliar codebase.

  • Good judgment on scope, trade-offs, and production readiness.

Nice to Have

  • Experience with data products, data mesh, semantic models, catalogs, or governance platforms.

  • Experience with MCP servers, tool registries, or multi-step agents.

  • Experience with Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, DuckDB, Postgres, graph databases, or vector databases.

  • Familiarity with OAuth, OIDC, SAML, SSO, RBAC, ABAC, SCIM, or policy engines.

  • Experience evaluating retrieval quality, tool accuracy, groundedness, and failure modes.

Contract Scope

  • Initial term: three to four months.

  • Focus: hands-on implementation and delivery.

  • No customer-facing responsibilities.

  • Potential extension if the project is successful.