Remote Data Lake Engineer for AI-Driven Research Lab

Rice University; Houston (TX); Remote; USD 63,000 - 105,000; Full time

Job summary

Rice University is seeking a Data Scientist to build and operate the READINESS data infrastructure for an NSF-funded project. You will manage a central data lake, ingest data from diverse instruments, and implement SQL and vector-search capabilities.

The role blends data engineering with AI-driven data access, requiring collaboration across platform teams and security teams. The position is fully remote within the United States, with CST working hours, and a one-year term with potential renewal

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, engineering, or a related quantitative field is required.
• Three or more years of related professional experience in data engineering, data science, software engineering, or research computing.

Responsibilities

• Designs, deploys, and operates the READINESS central data lake and S3-compatible object store.
• Develops ingestion connectors for data from synthesis tools and instruments.
• Maintains metadata and provenance schema and Python client library for data access.
• Deploys SQL query layer (Trino/Hive Metastore over Parquet) and APIs for researchers.
• Builds embedding pipelines and vector indexes for images, spectra, and logs, enabling retrieval-augmented services.
• Develops AI agents that answer questions from the data lake with team collaboration.
• Implements security controls, including Rice SSO/MFA, IAM roles, encryption, and audit logging.

Skills

Programming

SQL modeling

Data storage & querying

Linux & Cloud

ML embeddings

Security & Access

ROS/Robot

Learning ability

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, or related quantitative field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Trino/Presto

Hive Metastore

Parquet

S3/Ceph/MinIO

Spark

AWS/Azure

Job description

Rice University is seeking a Data Scientist to build and operate the READINESS data infrastructure for an NSF-funded project. You will manage a central data lake, ingest data from diverse instruments, and implement SQL and vector-search capabilities.

The role blends data engineering with AI-driven data access, requiring collaboration across platform teams and security teams. The position is fully remote within the United States, with CST working hours, and a one-year term with potential renewal