Senior Data Engineer - AI-Ready Data Pipelines (Remote)

Merci Technologies, Inc.; San Diego (CA); Remote; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Merci Technologies is hiring a Senior Data Engineer to design, build, and optimize data infrastructure for AI and analytics workloads in a remote-capable role. You’ll work with data engineers, scientists, and business stakeholders to deliver reliable data platforms and pipelines that scale for ML and generative AI use cases.

The role emphasizes hands-on execution, system-thinking, clean code, and mentoring junior engineers.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in data or software engineering with data focus.
• Advanced SQL and Python; Scala/Java a plus.
• Hands-on with AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Strong experience with Snowflake or Databricks, plus a cloud data platform.
• Experience with Spark and distributed processing.
• Knowledge of data modeling and medallion architecture.
• Experience with orchestration and dbt.
• Familiar with Git, CI/CD, and IaC tools like Terraform.
• Bachelor’s degree in CS/IS/Engineering or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable batch and real-time data pipelines using modern ELT/ETL patterns.
• Develop and optimize data models in cloud data warehouses and lakehouses such as Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, or Azure Synapse.
• Build streaming data solutions using Kafka, Kinesis, Event Hubs, or Spark Structured Streaming.
• Prepare and curate high-quality datasets that support ML, analytics, and generative AI use cases, including RAG pipelines and vector data stores.
• Orchestrate workflows using Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or equivalent tools.
• Implement transformation layers using dbt and SQL best practices.
• Establish data quality, validation, and observability frameworks to ensure accuracy and reliability.
• Apply data governance, lineage, cataloging, and access controls in line with security and compliance requirements.
• Lead migration of legacy on-premises data systems to modern cloud platforms.
• Use infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD practices to automate deployment of data infrastructure.
• Partner with data scientists, ML engineers, analysts, and stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to engineering standards and documentation.

Skills

SQL

Python

Cloud platforms

Snowflake

Databricks

Spark

dbt

Airflow

Terraform

Git / CI/CD

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/IS/Engineering

Tools

Snowflake

Databricks

BigQuery

Redshift

Azure Synapse

Kafka

Kinesis

Event Hubs

dbt

Airflow

Dagster

Prefect

Terraform

Git

Job description

Merci Technologies is hiring a Senior Data Engineer to design, build, and optimize data infrastructure for AI and analytics workloads in a remote-capable role. You’ll work with data engineers, scientists, and business stakeholders to deliver reliable data platforms and pipelines that scale for ML and generative AI use cases.

The role emphasizes hands-on execution, system-thinking, clean code, and mentoring junior engineers.