Production AI Engineer – Data Pipelines & ML (Hybrid)

Optimum; Bethpage (NY); Hybrid; USD 84,000 - 137,000; Full time

Job summary

Optimum is seeking a Software Development Engineer I with an interest in AI and machine learning to join our AI engineering team in the New York area. You’ll work across AI initiatives, moving from prototype to production systems and collaborating with data scientists, ML engineers, product managers, and infrastructure teams.

You’ll gain depth in production AI systems, familiarity with Confluent Kafka, Google Cloud, and BigQuery, and participate in building streaming and batch data pipelines,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field required.
• 2-3 years of professional software development experience.
• Exposure to Confluent Kafka or another event streaming platform; interest in Confluent tooling such as Flink, Kafka Streams, Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, or ksqlDB.
• Working knowledge of SQL and exposure to a cloud data warehouse; experience with BigQuery preferred.
• Exposure to Google Cloud or another major cloud provider, with interest in building and productionalizing services on Google Cloud.
• Foundational understanding of AI/ML concepts, including LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, and tool or function calling.
• Strong communication skills and willingness to adapt to shifting priorities.
• Familiarity with containers (Docker) and CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and productionalization of AI-driven systems and services across multiple initiatives under guidance of senior engineers.
• Implement, test, and maintain well-scoped components of AI applications and the pipelines that feed them.
• Build and maintain streaming and batch data pipelines using Confluent Kafka and tools like Flink or Kafka Streams.
• Write and maintain queries and datasets in BigQuery to support AI workloads and reporting.
• Develop APIs and microservices to support AI workloads.
• Support agent, tool-calling, and retrieval integrations so AI systems query internal systems and return grounded answers.
• Assist with modeling and simulation work, including digital twin approaches to complex infrastructure.
• Participate in code reviews, write unit and integration tests, and contribute to CI/CD automation.
• Support deployment, monitoring, and troubleshooting of AI services on Google Cloud.
• Follow AI best practices related to ethical AI and data handling.
• Document systems for wider team support and future maintenance.
• Continuously build skills in AI/ML and modern data engineering practices.

Skills

Confluent Kafka

Google Cloud

BigQuery

AI/ML concepts

Docker

CI/CD pipelines

SQL

Prompt engineering

Team collaboration

Networking concepts

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science

Tools

Flink

Kafka Streams

Schema Registry

Kafka Connect

ksqlDB

Job description

Optimum is seeking a Software Development Engineer I with an interest in AI and machine learning to join our AI engineering team in the New York area. You’ll work across AI initiatives, moving from prototype to production systems and collaborating with data scientists, ML engineers, product managers, and infrastructure teams.

You’ll gain depth in production AI systems, familiarity with Confluent Kafka, Google Cloud, and BigQuery, and participate in building streaming and batch data pipelines,