Staff / Principal Data Engineer (AI)

Location: Remote EU / Europe, including Malta

Salary: €80,000–€95,000 per annum

Company

hirify.global presents a technical leadership opportunity focused on modern data platforms and AI-enabled data engineering.

What you will do

• Define the architecture and long-term roadmap for a scalable data platform covering ingestion, batch processing, streaming, warehousing, and data services.
• Lead the adoption of AI-enabled engineering practices, including LLM-based tools and agents for pipeline development, testing, documentation, validation, and operational support.
• Build governed, documented, and accessible data foundations for AI applications, LLMs, and machine learning models.
• Develop real-time data capabilities for business decisions, customer-facing services, operational workflows, and marketing use cases.
• Improve data modelling, quality assurance, observability, governance, reliability, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency.
• Lead migrations and platform transformation initiatives while mentoring engineers, reviewing architectures, and translating business requirements into technical proposals.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience in data engineering, data platform engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Staff, Principal, Lead, or equivalent senior technical experience with responsibility for architecture, technical direction, or cross-team initiatives.
• Experience delivering significant data platform improvements, modernisation programmes, or production migrations.
• Strong hands-on programming in Python, Scala, or Java, together with advanced SQL skills.
• Extensive experience with data streaming and event-driven architectures, ideally Apache Kafka or equivalent.
• Experience with real-time analytical databases or OLAP platforms such as ClickHouse, Apache Druid, StarRocks, or comparable solutions.
• Strong knowledge of data warehousing, data modelling, transformation frameworks such as dbt, and platforms such as Amazon Redshift or similar.
• Experience designing and operating data platforms on AWS or another major cloud provider.
• Practical experience applying AI or LLM capabilities to data engineering workflows, or building and serving data for AI/ML applications.
• Knowledge of data quality engineering, automated testing, monitoring, observability, governance, data ownership, CI/CD, containers, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Ability to influence technical decisions, mentor engineers, and lead complex initiatives without relying solely on formal management authority.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with a pragmatic, product-oriented approach to solving business problems.
• Professional proficiency in written and spoken English.

Nice to have

• Experience in high-volume consumer technology, online entertainment, financial services, or other complex regulated environments.
• Experience building real-time integrations with CRM, customer engagement, or marketing automation platforms.
• Experience supporting personalisation, customer segmentation, fraud detection, risk analytics, or similar data-driven use cases.
• Familiarity with MLOps, LLMOps, semantic layers, vector databases, or AI-ready data architectures.
• Experience with business intelligence and self-service analytics platforms such as Looker.
• Previous experience mentoring engineers or coordinating cross-functional technical teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote work within Europe.
• Opportunity to influence data architecture and engineering strategy.
• Combination of hands-on software engineering and platform-level technical leadership.
• Scope to introduce practical AI capabilities into engineering workflows and business data services.
• Collaborative environment where technical decisions affect business capabilities and product development.