Senior Software Engineer, AI & Data

Renterra; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision insurance

Flexible PTO

Equity

Job summary

Renterra is seeking a senior data engineer to build the data foundation and AI-powered features for an enterprise SaaS platform. You will design data capture, pipelines, and analytical systems, then ship AI agents and workflows that solve real customer problems.

You will own production quality, reliability, and cost, collaborate with leadership, product, and customers, and report directly to the CTO.

Qualifications

• Built and operated production data/AI systems.
• Strong product and architectural judgment.
• Experience with data architecture, SQL, and data modeling.
• Deep understanding of distributed/event-driven systems.

Responsibilities

• Build data and AI foundation: capture, structuring, processing, storage, and querying across Renterra.
• Create AI-powered products: agents and workflows using data to solve customer problems.
• Own production quality: reliability, observability, security, and cost-efficiency.
• Measure what works: evaluations for accuracy, latency, cost, and impact.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with leadership, product, engineering, and customers.
• Make pragmatic technical decisions on deterministic workflows, queries, models, or hybrids.

Skills

AI/ML products

Data architecture

SQL

Data modeling

Distributed systems

Event-driven

Tools

ClickHouse

Job description

Renterra is a Series A-backed SaaS company modernizing the $100B+ heavy equipment rental industry. We've built an end-to-end platform that helps rental businesses run smarter, spanning operations, payments, marketing, accounting integrations, and more.

Our platform contains a growing body of operational and financial data that can do more than power reports. We believe it can help rental businesses identify problems, make better decisions, and truly help them thrive!

We're looking for a senior engineer to build the data systems that make this possible, then use those systems to create AI agents and intelligent product experiences that solve real customer problems.

This is a hybrid role based in Chicago, with regular in-office collaboration and flexibility for focused remote work.

How we work

We value velocity and efficiency through fast iteration cycles. Our lean team doesn't sit on ceremony. Build times, deployments, and meetings are kept tight so we can deliver effective solutions to our customers.

We expect engineers to own outcomes, make pragmatic architectural decisions, and stay close to the people using what they build.

What you'll do

Build our data and AI foundation: Design how operational and financial data is captured, structured, processed, stored, and queried across Renterra. This includes event architecture, data pipelines, and analytical systems such as ClickHouse.

Create AI-powered products: Build agents and intelligent workflows that use Renterra's data to identify problems, answer questions, support decisions, and automate work for our customers.

Own production quality: Make data and AI systems reliable, observable, secure, and cost-effective. Design for failure recovery, data quality, permissions, model uncertainty, and appropriate human review.

Measure what works: Develop evaluations and feedback loops for accuracy, reliability, latency, cost, and customer impact. Use what you learn to improve both the underlying data systems and the product experience.

Work across the company: Partner with leadership, product, engineering, support, and customers to find valuable problems and turn them into shipped solutions.

Make pragmatic technical decisions: Choose the right approach for each problem, whether that is a deterministic workflow, analytical query, machine-learning model, LLM, vendor, or a combination of them.

Report directly to the CTO.

What we're looking for

You're an AI-forward builder who wants to own the full path from raw data to a customer-facing product that solves a real problem.

You're a high-caliber software engineer at the Senior, Staff, or Principal level. You've built and operated production systems and bring strong product and architectural judgment.

You have deep experience with data architecture, SQL, and data modeling, including analytical databases such as ClickHouse. You understand how data structure and access patterns affect performance, maintainability, and cost.

You understand distributed and event-driven systems, including ordering, retries, deduplication, replay, schema evolution, and failure recovery.

You've shipped AI- or ML-powered product features and understand the full system around the model: data, retrieval, tool use, evaluation, observability, permissions, and fallbacks.

Useful additional experience

• Building agentic systems that call tools or take actions in production
• Retrieval, embeddings, semantic search, or hybrid search
• Evaluation frameworks for AI agents and LLM-powered features
• Classical machine learning, forecasting, anomaly detection, or optimization
• Change data capture and database replication
• Data governance, permissions, privacy, and auditability
• Financial, accounting, logistics, or other operational business data
• Customer-facing analytics and reporting products

Why Renterra

• Competitive compensation and equity
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Flexible PTO
• A highly visible, high-impact role
• Direct influence over Renterra's AI and data strategy
• The opportunity to build the technical foundation and the customer-facing products that run on top of it

This is a unique opportunity to define how data and AI work across a growing SaaS platform. You'll build the foundation, turn it into products, and work directly with customers to see whether those products solve meaningful problems.

We encourage individuals of all backgrounds and experiences to apply. We believe a diverse team builds better products and makes better decisions.

Renterra is an Equal Opportunity Employer.