Senior Staff AI Engineer

Teradata Group; San Diego (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work model

Inclusive environment

Focus on well-being

Job summary

Teradata Group is seeking a Senior Staff AI Engineer in San Diego, California, to lead the design and evolution of their enterprise AI platforms. This role involves owning architecture-level decisions and influencing AI platform strategy while working closely with product management and engineering teams.

The ideal candidate has a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering and over 12 years of experience in backend services, distributed systems, and a strong proficiency in Java, Go, or Python.

At Teradata, we foster a people-first culture with a flexible work model, prioritizing well-being and inclusivity.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience building backend services or AI platforms.
• Strong proficiency in Java, Go, or Python with experience in large-scale services.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native architectures.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of large-scale AI systems.
• Drive technical strategy across multiple engineering teams.
• Mentor Senior and Staff-level engineers on architecture and design.

Skills

Java

Go

Python

Distributed system design

Fault tolerance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent

Tools

SQL

NoSQL data stores

Kubernetes

Docker

Job description

About Teradata

At Teradata, we believe that people thrive when empowered with better information. That’s why we build the most complete cloud analytics and data platform for AI. By delivering harmonized data, trusted AI, and faster innovation, we empower the world’s leading enterprises to make confident, data‑driven decisions at scale.

Role Overview

As a Senior Staff AI Engineer, you will be a senior technical leader responsible for designing, evolving, and scaling Teradata’s enterprise AI platforms and capabilities. This role goes beyond feature delivery—you will own architecture‑level decisions, influence AI platform strategy, and lead complex initiatives spanning agentic AI, LLM platforms, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), vector stores, and developer‑facing AI systems.

You will operate with a high degree of autonomy, partner closely with product and architecture leadership, and raise the technical bar across multiple teams.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Lead the design and evolution of large‑scale, distributed AI systems that power Teradata’s AI platform and AI native products.
• Own end‑to‑end architecture for critical AI capabilities such as agentic workflows, RAG pipelines, vector search, semantic retrieval, and AI orchestration frameworks.
• Drive technical strategy and architectural consistency across multiple engineering teams.

AI Systems & Platform Development

• Design and implement production‑grade AI systems using LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, and agent‑based architectures.
• Build scalable, secure, and reusable platform services and APIs supporting AI workloads across the software development lifecycle.
• Define and implement guardrails for reliability, safety, governance, and cost control in enterprise AI systems.

Cross Functional Influence

• Partner with product management, architecture, research, and cloud platform teams to translate business requirements into scalable AI solutions.
• Influence roadmap decisions by providing deep technical insight, trade‑off analysis, and long‑term platform thinking.
• Act as a technical escalation point for complex system design, performance, and reliability challenges.

Quality, Performance & Operational Excellence

• Drive best practices for testing, observability, evaluation, and production readiness of AI systems.
• Identify systemic performance bottlenecks and lead efforts to optimize distributed systems and AI pipelines.
• Establish engineering standards that improve development velocity, quality, and operational resilience.

Mentorship & Org‑Level Impact

• Mentor Senior and Staff‑level engineers, providing guidance on architecture, design reviews, and technical decision‑making.
• Raise the overall engineering bar through design forums, technical reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Lead by example through hands‑on contributions to the most complex and business‑critical problems.

Required Qualifications (Nonnegotiable)

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years of experience building backend services, distributed systems, or data/AI platforms.
• Strong proficiency in Java, Go, or Python, with experience building large‑scale services.
• Deep understanding of distributed system design, scalability, fault tolerance, and cloud‑native architectures.
• Proven experience designing and operating production systems with SQL and NoSQL data stores.

Preferred / Differentiating Skills

• Experience with LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, and AI orchestration frameworks.
• Exposure to agentic AI patterns such as tool calling, planning, memory, and multi‑step reasoning.
• Experience building or operating AI systems in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, and production‑grade observability.

Why We Think You’ll Love Teradata

We prioritize a people‑first culture because we know our people are at the very heart of our success. We embrace a flexible work model because we trust our people to make decisions about how, when, and where they work. We focus on well‑being because we care about our people and their ability to thrive both personally and professionally. We are committed to actively working to foster an inclusive environment that celebrates people for all of who they are.