Senior Data Engineer (Contract) [HR208] (PK)

Smart Working is dedicated to creating a work environment where your role not only fits your skills on paper but also feels fulfilling every day. This opportunity goes beyond typical remote jobs by offering a genuine community that prioritizes your growth and well-being from the very beginning. Our mission is to eliminate geographic barriers and connect talented professionals with exceptional global teams for full-time, long-term positions. We focus on meaningful work with teams that invest in your success, empowering you to develop both personally and professionally. Recognized as one of the highest-rated workplaces on Glassdoor, Smart Working offers a truly remote-first experience where you can thrive.

Key Responsibilities

- Architect and develop scalable data pipelines and infrastructure to support AI and product systems.
- Design and maintain data ingestion, transformation, and storage architectures for both operational and AI workloads.
- Build and manage batch and real-time data pipelines.
- Develop and optimize systems for vector search, retrieval, and machine learning data workflows.
- Ensure data reliability, security, and governance across the platform.
- Collaborate closely with AI, backend engineering, product, and leadership teams to support training, inference, and product features.
- Implement monitoring, observability, and data quality frameworks.
- Optimize performance for large-scale datasets and query systems.
- Contribute to technical architecture decisions and long-term data strategy.
- Serve as the founding senior data hire, defining culture, standards, and hiring criteria for the growing data function.
- Partner directly with founders and product leadership to translate data capabilities into strategic product decisions.

Required Qualifications

- Over 7 years of professional experience, primarily in dedicated data engineering roles.
- Proven expertise designing and building data pipelines and distributed data systems.
- Strong experience with relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL; MySQL or similar is acceptable.
- Familiarity with NoSQL databases.
- Experience working with vector databases used in modern AI systems.
- Proficient programming skills in Python.
- Demonstrated ability to make and justify architectural decisions independently.
- Experience building scalable backend systems.
- Skilled in designing data models and storage architectures.
- Deep understanding of data processing performance and optimization.
- Experience with data frameworks and infrastructure technologies such as Apache Spark, Apache Airflow, Kafka, and Elasticsearch or OpenSearch is highly desirable.
- Knowledge of relevant database technologies including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and vector databases like Qdrant, Milvus, or pgvector is highly desirable.
- Experience with Python data-processing libraries such as Pandas or Polars is a plus.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits

- Experience working on AI or machine learning platforms.
- Familiarity with stream processing and event-driven architectures.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure providers such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Microsoft Azure.
- Background in high-growth startups or early-stage companies.

Smart Working may utilize artificial intelligence tools to assist with parts of the hiring process, including application review, resume analysis, and response assessment to identify inconsistencies or verification signals. These tools support the recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are made by humans. Candidates seeking more information about data processing practices are encouraged to inquire further.