Junior AI Data Engineer: Build AI-Driven Pipelines

Cortica - Neurodevelopmental; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 80,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) with company matching

Paid holidays and wellness days

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Job summary

Cortica is seeking a Junior AI Data Engineer to learn data engineering while building AI-first habits from day one. Working under the guidance of senior engineers, this role contributes to data pipelines, models, and reporting that power care decisions, financial planning, and operational efficiency at Cortica.

This role partners with the data science, finance, and clinical operations teams on well-scoped tasks, growing toward independent ownership over time.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS/IS/Engineering/Math or related field.
• 0–2 years of experience; 1–2 end-to-end data pipelines ingesting data.
• Familiar with AI coding assistants or eager to adopt AI-first workflows.
• 6+ months Python; write scripts to read, clean, transform data (pandas).
• Intermediate SQL: joins, aggregations, filtering, subqueries.
• Exposure to AWS or Azure; basic cloud fundamentals cert a plus.
• Experience building dashboards in Power BI/Tableau.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to scoped data engineering tasks within larger projects with guidance.
• Use AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) and verify AI-generated code before commit.
• Follow team context files and conventions to stay consistent.
• Build and maintain data pipelines ingesting from AWS, Azure, Salesforce, MuleSoft into AWS Data Lake.
• Assist in implementing data models using Kimball dimensional modeling.
• Develop simple Python orchestration steps and run basic data quality checks.
• Support Power BI data models and reports; assist analytics team with data questions.
• Assist with small automation scripts and internal tooling for data pipelines.
• Follow data-security and HIPAA practices; document work clearly for reuse.
• Collaborate across IT, finance, clinical operations, and data science.
• Travel to local Cortica centers may be required.

Skills

Python

SQL

Power BI

AWS/Azure

Pandas

Data Pipelines

Dimensional modeling

AI coding tools

Documentation

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Claude Code

Cursor

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Cortica is seeking a Junior AI Data Engineer to learn data engineering while building AI-first habits from day one. Working under the guidance of senior engineers, this role contributes to data pipelines, models, and reporting that power care decisions, financial planning, and operational efficiency at Cortica.

This role partners with the data science, finance, and clinical operations teams on well-scoped tasks, growing toward independent ownership over time.