Data Engineer for AI-Driven Food R&D Platform

Proxy Foods AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Proxy Foods AI is seeking a hands-on Data Engineer with 3+ years to join our team. You will build and maintain the data foundation behind our AI-powered product platform, shaping pipelines, integrations, and data models that power analytics and customer experiences.

Collaborate with engineering, product, and food science teams to ensure data reliability and scalability, embracing a startup mindset, end-to-end ownership, and opportunities to apply AI-enabled workflows for cleaner, richer datasets.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in data engineering, analytics engineering, or backend data-focused roles.
• Strong SQL and Python in production environments.
• Hands-on experience building ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Experience with relational databases, data warehouses, and API-based integrations.
• Strong data modeling and data quality practices.
• Comfortable with semi-structured data (JSON, CSV).
• Ability to move quickly, work independently in a startup environment.
• Clear communicator across technical and non-technical teams.
• Exposure to AI/LLM applications for data extraction or enrichment is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain reliable ETL/ELT pipelines across APIs, databases, files, and external data sources.
• Clean, normalize, and structure complex datasets related to ingredients, specifications, nutrition, costs, and compliance.
• Design and improve data models and storage layers for features, analytics, and reporting.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and domain experts to translate real-world workflows into scalable data systems.
• Implement data quality checks, validation rules, monitoring, and alerting across pipelines.
• Leverage AI/LLM-assisted workflows to improve data cleansing, normalization, enrichment, and structuring with strong validation.
• Improve performance, maintainability, and observability of the data stack.

Skills

SQL

Python

ETL/ELT

Data modeling

APIs

Relational databases

Data warehouses

Data quality

Communication

AI/LLM

Job description

Proxy Foods AI is seeking a hands-on Data Engineer with 3+ years to join our team. You will build and maintain the data foundation behind our AI-powered product platform, shaping pipelines, integrations, and data models that power analytics and customer experiences.

Collaborate with engineering, product, and food science teams to ensure data reliability and scalability, embracing a startup mindset, end-to-end ownership, and opportunities to apply AI-enabled workflows for cleaner, richer datasets.