Senior AI Platform Engineer Contract

Job description

### 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.