Senior Lead Data & AI Engineer
Staff-level AI engineer leading end-to-end architecture of scalable, agent-driven AI systems in Databricks/AWS, focusing on reusable data pipelines, Lakeflow, and production-grade ML workflows.
Skills required
About this role
We are seeking an expert Lead Data & AI Engineer with 9 to 12+ years of experience to architect and deploy AI agents into business workflows, focusing on Databricks and AWS environments. You will lead data engineering, AI agent orchestration, and scalable, production-grade AI architectures.
Key Responsibilities:
Architect and build reusable, metadata-driven data and AI engineering frameworks that standardize ingestion, transformation, feature engineering, and AI workflow deployment. Leverage Databricks, lakehouse architecture, declarative pipelines, and cloud-native services to enable scalable, governed, and reusable data products across the organization.
Architect and deploy Delta Live Tables and Lakeflow jobs on Databricks to automate data processing, AI pipelines, and agent data refresh cycles.
Leverage Databricks Workflows and Job Orchestration to schedule and monitor AI agent deployments across multiple business workflows.
Integrate Lakeflow for real-time data stream processing, ensuring AI agents are updated and responsive to live data.
Ensure seamless orchestration between AI models and data pipelines, using event-driven architectures for real-time inference and deployment.
Implement and orchestrate AI agents using frameworks such as Agentic systems, AgentOps tooling, and solutions like Agents on Databricks (Agent-bricks).
Hands-on experience deploying AI agents using RAG, Graph RAG, MCP-enabled integrations, and agent orchestration frameworks such as AgentOps, AgentBricks, LangGraph, or cloud-native orchestration services.
Manage AI agent lifecycles, monitoring, and scaling using tools like SageMaker, Bedrock, or AI orchestration frameworks on AWS.
Ensure robust data governance, metadata management, and AI observability through Unity Catalog, AWS Glue, or custom metadata layers.
Design for scalability and modularity, ensuring AI agents are reusable across multiple business processes.
Qualifications:
9–12+ years in data engineering, specializing in AI deployment within cloud ecosystems (Databricks, AWS).
Hands-on experience deploying AI agents using frameworks like RAG, graph RAG, and orchestrating agents (AgentOps, Agent-bricks, etc.).
Proficient in AWS AI/ML services (SageMaker, Bedrock) and orchestration tools (MWAA, Step Functions).
Strong knowledge of lakehouse architecture, Unity Catalog, and data modeling best practices.
Deep experience in data orchestration, monitoring, and scalable AI-driven workflows.
How We Work
Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.
