Staff AI Data Engineer

sonyinteractiveentertainmentglobal; United States; On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Sony Interactive Entertainment seeks a Staff AI Data Engineer to design and build data infrastructure powering AI/ML workflows across PlayStation Studios. You’ll own data pipelines, models, and APIs enabling LLM-powered systems and analytics across the organization.

This hands-on role spans data engineering, backend systems, cloud infrastructure, and applied AI, with leadership responsibilities and collaboration across studios to deliver scalable data platforms.

Qualifications

• Seven+ years of experience building and operating production data platforms, backend systems, or distributed data-intensive apps.
• Proficient in Python with production-grade software experience.
• Experience designing production data pipelines and data-quality validation.
• Experience with relational databases and analytical platforms (PostgreSQL, Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery).
• Cloud-native architecture on AWS or GCP and IaC (Terraform).

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and own scalable data infrastructure for LLM and analytics workflows.
• Build and operate batch and event-driven data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and delivery across varied studio data sources.
• Develop ETL/ELT pipelines to feed data warehouses and curated datasets for analysts, analytics engineers, ML engineers, and downstream applications.
• Design data models, APIs, and storage patterns for AI-powered systems.
• Develop backend services and reusable components in Python for production AI workflows.
• Design and operate cloud infrastructure using AWS and/or GCP, IaC, containerized workloads, and CI/CD practices.
• Establish data quality, lineage, observability, testing, schema evolution, reliability, security, and ownership standards.
• Evaluate new technologies and architectures across data engineering and LLM/agent ecosystems.
• Partner with AI/ML engineers, software engineers, analysts, and studio teams to translate requirements into scalable solutions.
• Provide technical leadership and document patterns for scale across teams.

Skills

Python

Data platforms

Distributed systems

Git-based development

Tools

PostgreSQL

Redshift

Snowflake

BigQuery

Terraform

Job description

Why Sony Interactive Entertainment?

Sony Interactive Entertainment isn't just the Best Place to Play - it's also the Best Place to Work. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is the company behind the PlayStation brand. As a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation, we're part of a proud legacy of innovation and excellence. SIE is a dynamic technology company, delivering cutting-edge hardware and network services to more than 100 million people and an entertainment leader, home to some of the most beloved and recognizable intellectual properties (IP) in the world. Our role at SIE is to create and nurture the experiences under the PlayStation brand, a name synonymous with entertainment excellence and creativity.

About the Role

We're looking for a Staff AI Data Engineer to design and build the data infrastructure, pipelines, and services that power AI and machine learning workflows across PlayStation Studios. You'll own systems that move, transform, organize, and serve data for LLM applications, agentic workflows, analytics, experimentation, and production AI services.

This is a hands-on Staff-level engineering role spanning data engineering, backend systems, cloud infrastructure, and applied AI. You'll work across the stack to build reliable data platforms and services, establish scalable architectural patterns, and help teams turn studio data into useful, production-ready AI capabilities.

What You'll Be Doing

• Design, build, and own scalable data infrastructure supporting LLM, agentic, machine learning, analytics, and experimentation workflows.
• Build and operate reliable batch and event-driven data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and delivery across varied studio data sources.
• Develop ETL/ELT pipelines that feed data warehouses and curated datasets for analysts, analytics engineers, ML engineers, and downstream applications.
• Design data models, APIs, and storage patterns that make structured and unstructured data easy to discover, access, and use across AI-powered systems.
• Build data-backed services and platform capabilities for LLM applications, including retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector search, tool integrations, and context retrieval.
• Develop backend services and reusable components in Python that support production AI and data workflows.
• Design and operate cloud infrastructure using AWS and/or GCP, Infrastructure as Code, containerized workloads, and modern CI/CD practices.
• Establish standards for data quality, lineage, observability, testing, schema evolution, reliability, security, and operational ownership.
• Evaluate new technologies and architectural approaches across data engineering and the rapidly evolving LLM and agent ecosystem, and determine where they provide practical value.
• Partner with AI/ML engineers, software engineers, analysts, analytics engineers, researchers, and studio teams to translate ambiguous requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Provide technical leadership across projects, influence architecture and engineering standards, mentor other engineers, and help shape the long-term direction of the AI Engineering data platform.
• Produce clear technical documentation, architectural guidance, examples, and reusable patterns that allow solutions to scale across teams and studios.

Qualifications

• You have at least seven years of experience building and operating production data platforms, backend systems, or distributed data-intensive applications.
• You are highly proficient in Python and have experience building maintainable production software, not just scripts or notebooks.
• You have designed and operated production data pipelines, including ingestion, transformation, orchestration, monitoring, failure recovery, and data-quality validation.
• You have strong experience with relational databases and analytical data platforms such as PostgreSQL, Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, or similar systems.
• You are experienced with cloud-native architecture on AWS, GCP, or another major cloud platform and understand networking, security, storage, compute, and managed data services.
• You have hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code such as Terraform and with modern CI/CD and DevOps practices.
• You understand data modeling, schema design, query performance, partitioning, data lifecycle management, and the tradeoffs between transactional, analytical, and specialized storage systems.
• You have experience designing APIs, services, or other programmatic interfaces for accessing and operating on data.
• You are comfortable working in collaborative Git-based development environments with code review, automated testing, and production deployment workflows.
• You communicate clearly, write strong technical documentation, and can translate broad or ambiguous problems into pragmatic, maintainable systems.
• You operate effectively at Staff level: independently driving architecture and execution, influe