Senior AI Platform Engineer Contract

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 Youll 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 Were 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.

Required Experience:

Senior IC