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

Smart Working is dedicated to creating a work environment where your job feels as right as it looks on paper. This opportunity goes beyond traditional remote roles by fostering a genuine community that prioritizes your personal and professional growth. Our mission is to eliminate geographic barriers by connecting talented professionals with exceptional global teams for full-time, long-term positions. Join one of the highest-rated workplaces on Glassdoor and thrive in a truly remote-first culture that supports your success from day one.

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 to ensure seamless data flow.
- 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 to maintain high standards.
- Optimize performance for large-scale datasets and query systems.
- Contribute to technical architecture decisions and define the long-term data strategy.
- Serve as the founding senior data engineer by establishing culture, standards, and hiring criteria for the growing data team.
- Partner directly with founders and product leadership to translate data capabilities into impactful product decisions.

Required Qualifications

- Over 7 years of professional experience, primarily in dedicated data engineering roles.
- Proven expertise in designing and building data pipelines and distributed data systems.
- Strong experience with relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL; MySQL or similar databases are also acceptable.
- Familiarity with NoSQL databases and vector databases commonly used in AI systems.
- Proficient programming skills in Python.
- Demonstrated ability to make and justify architectural decisions beyond implementation.
- Experience in building scalable backend systems.
- Skilled in designing data models and storage architectures.
- Deep understanding of data processing performance and optimization techniques.
- Experience with data frameworks and infrastructure technologies such as Apache Spark, Apache Airflow, Kafka, and Elasticsearch or OpenSearch is highly desirable.
- Familiarity with relevant database technologies including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and vector databases like Qdrant, Milvus, or pgvector.
- 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.
- Knowledge of stream processing and event-driven architectures.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure providers such as GCP, AWS, or Azure.
- Background in high-growth startups or early-stage companies is advantageous.

Smart Working may utilize artificial intelligence tools to assist in reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, and assessing responses during the hiring process. These tools support the recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are made by human evaluators. Candidates seeking more information about data processing practices are encouraged to inquire further.