Data Engineer

Koda Tech; Antwerpen; On-site; EUR 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company car or mobility budget

Bonus

Insurance

Additional holiday benefits

Office-based environment

Job summary

Koda Tech, a leading Belgian organisation, is building a next-generation AI platform to securely enable employees to leverage AI across the business. As a Senior Data Engineer, you will join a newly established engineering team responsible for the data and knowledge foundations powering AI applications, assistants and intelligent search experiences across the organisation.

This hands-on role focuses on scalable ingestion pipelines, retrieval systems and enterprise data integrations.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of commercial Data Engineering experience.
• Strong Python and SQL development skills.
• Experience building and maintaining production-grade data pipelines and ELT workflows.
• Strong understanding of data modelling, data quality and data lineage principles.
• Hands‑on experience with Elasticsearch, OpenSearch or similar search technologies.
• Experience designing and managing large-scale data ingestion and indexing frameworks.
• Understanding of metadata management, data governance and data catalogue concepts.
• Experience working with enterprise data sources including databases, document repositories, SharePoint and messaging systems.
• Knowledge of semantic search, embeddings or modern information retrieval concepts.
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices including testing, CI/CD and monitoring.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work within cross‑functional engineering teams.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related field.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop data ingestion pipelines for enterprise knowledge and AI platforms.
• Build parsing, transformation and enrichment pipelines for documents, PDFs, images and structured data sources.
• Develop chunking, embedding and indexing frameworks to support enterprise search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) use cases.
• Build and optimise Elasticsearch-based search platforms and retrieval services.
• Implement entitlement-aware data models and metadata frameworks to ensure secure access to information.
• Integrate enterprise data catalogues and governed data products into the AI platform.
• Develop and maintain data quality, validation and lineage processes across knowledge and search ecosystems.
• Create integrations with enterprise applications, databases, document repositories and legacy systems.
• Build scalable data pipelines using Python, SQL and modern ELT frameworks.
• Work with AI Engineers to improve retrieval performance, search relevance and knowledge grounding.
• Drive best practices around data governance, classification, ownership and information lifecycle management.
• Support the ongoing evolution of search, retrieval and data platform capabilities across the organisation.

Skills

Python

SQL

Data pipelines

ELT workflows

Data modelling

Data quality

Data lineage

Elasticsearch

Metadata management

Data governance

Databases

SharePoint

Messaging systems

Semantic search

Embeddings

CI/CD

Testing

Monitoring

Communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related field

Tools

Elasticsearch

OpenSearch

Kubernetes

SharePoint

Job description

A leading Belgian organisation is building a next-generation AI platform designed to enable employees to securely leverage artificial intelligence across the business. The platform will provide a centralised environment for developing, deploying and governing AI solutions, with a strong focus on scalability, security and responsible AI practices.

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will join a newly established engineering team responsible for building the data and knowledge foundations that power AI applications, assistants and intelligent search experiences across the organisation.

This is a hands-on Data Engineering role focused on creating scalable ingestion pipelines, retrieval systems and enterprise data integrations. You will play a critical role in transforming structured and unstructured business data into trusted, governed and searchable knowledge that can be consumed by AI solutions at scale.

The Role

You will be responsible for designing and maintaining the data pipelines and retrieval infrastructure that power enterprise AI applications.

Working closely with Data Engineers, AI Engineers and Platform Engineers, you will build the systems that ingest, classify, enrich and index information from across the business. Your work will ensure AI applications can access high-quality, well-governed and permission-aware data in a secure and scalable way.

You will play a key role in developing enterprise search capabilities, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) data pipelines, embedding frameworks, metadata management processes and data governance controls that underpin the organisation's AI strategy.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop data ingestion pipelines for enterprise knowledge and AI platforms.
• Build parsing, transformation and enrichment pipelines for documents, PDFs, images and structured data sources.
• Develop chunking, embedding and indexing frameworks to support enterprise search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) use cases.
• Build and optimise Elasticsearch-based search platforms and retrieval services.
• Implement entitlement-aware data models and metadata frameworks to ensure secure access to information.
• Integrate enterprise data catalogues and governed data products into the AI platform.
• Develop and maintain data quality, validation and lineage processes across knowledge and search ecosystems.
• Create integrations with enterprise applications, databases, document repositories and legacy systems.
• Build scalable data pipelines using Python, SQL and modern ELT frameworks.
• Work with AI Engineers to improve retrieval performance, search relevance and knowledge grounding.
• Drive best practices around data governance, classification, ownership and information lifecycle management.
• Support the ongoing evolution of search, retrieval and data platform capabilities across the organisation.

Requirements

Essential

• 4+ years of commercial Data Engineering experience.
• Strong Python and SQL development skills.
• Experience building and maintaining production-grade data pipelines and ELT workflows.
• Strong understanding of data modelling, data quality and data lineage principles.
• Hands‑on experience with Elasticsearch, OpenSearch or similar search technologies.
• Experience designing and managing large-scale data ingestion and indexing frameworks.
• Understanding of metadata management, data governance and data catalogue concepts.
• Experience working with enterprise data sources including databases, document repositories, SharePoint and messaging systems.
• Knowledge of semantic search, embeddings or modern information retrieval concepts.
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices including testing, CI/CD and monitoring.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work within cross‑functional engineering teams.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related field.

Desirable

• Experience working on AI or Generative AI platforms.
• Knowledge of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures.
• Experience building embedding pipelines and vector search solutions.
• Familiarity with enterprise data catalogue and governance tooling.
• Experience within financial services or other highly regulated industries.
• Exposure to legacy platforms or mainframe integrations.
• Knowledge of containerised environments such as Kubernetes or OpenShift.
• Dutch language skills are advantageous, with French considered a plus.

What's on Offer

• Opportunity to join a high-impact AI transformation programme.
• Work on the data foundations underpinning enterprise AI initiatives.
• Collaborate with experienced engineers, architects and AI specialists.
• Significant ownership of search, retrieval and knowledge platform capabilities.
• Exposure to large-scale data engineering and information management challenges.
• Long-term career progression within a growing Data & AI function.
• Modern technology environment with substantial investment in innovation and AI.
• Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package.
• Company car or mobility budget.
• Bonus, insurance and additional holiday benefits.
• Office-based environment with close collaboration across technical teams.

This role would suit a Senior Data Engineer, Lead Data Engineer, Data Platform Engineer, Search Engineer, Information Retrieval Engineer or Knowledge Platform Engineer looking to work on large-scale data platforms that support the next generation of enterprise AI solutions.