Staff AI Engineer

Teradata Group; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Teradata is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to lead the design, evolution, and scale of enterprise AI platforms. You will own architecture decisions and guide multiple teams to deliver robust AI capabilities that empower enterprise-wide decision making.

You will collaborate with product and architecture leadership to shape strategy, set guardrails for reliability, governance, and cost, and mentor senior engineers while advancing the AI platform stack across agentic AI, LLMs, retrieval systems, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in CS or related field.
• 8+ years building backend services, distributed systems, or AI platforms.
• Strong proficiency in Java, Go, or Python with large-scale services experience.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, scalability, fault tolerance, and cloud-native architectures.
• Proven experience operating production systems with SQL and NoSQL data stores.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and evolution of large-scale, distributed AI systems powering the Teradata AI platform.
• Own end-to-end architecture for agentic workflows, RAG pipelines, vector search, and AI orchestration frameworks.
• Drive technical strategy and maintain architectural consistency across multiple teams.

Skills

Backend services

Distributed systems

Java

Go

Python

Cloud native

SQL

NoSQL

LLMs

Embeddings

Vector databases

AI orchestration

Agentic AI patterns

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

Observability

Job description

Our Company

At Teradata, we believe that people thrive when empowered with better information. Teradata Autonomous Knowledge Platform activates enterprise intelligence by unifying data, knowledge and business context to achieve tangible outcomes. With Teradata, organizations can provide agents with full context for impact when it matters. Our solution lets businesses connect and scale on premises, in the cloud, or through a hybrid approach. Teradata delivers real business value with AI.

What You’ll Do

As aStaff 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 ownarchitecture level decisions, influenceAI platform strategy, and lead complex initiatives spanning agentic AI, LLM platforms, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), vector stores, and developer facing AI systems.

You willoperatewith 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 largescale, distributed AI systems that power Teradata’s AI platform andAI nativeproducts.
• Ownend-to-endarchitecture 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 implementproduction gradeAI systems using LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, andagent basedarchitectures.
• 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 FunctionalInfluence

• Partner with product management, architecture, research, and cloud platform teams to translate business requirements into scalable AI solutions.
• Influence roadmap decisions byprovidingdeep technical insight, tradeoff analysis, andlong-termplatform 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.
• Identifysystemic performance bottlenecks and lead efforts tooptimizedistributed systems and AI pipelines.
• Establish engineering standards that improve development velocity, quality, and operational resilience.

Mentorship & OrgLevel Impact

• Mentor Senior and Stafflevel engineers, providing guidance on architecture, design reviews, and technical decisionmaking.
• Raise the overall engineering bar through design forums, technical reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Lead by example through handson contributions to the most complex andbusinesscriticalproblems.

Who You’ll Work With

You will partner closely with product and architecture leadership, and raise the technical bar across multiple teams.

What Makes You a Qualified Candidate

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ yearsof experience building backend services, distributed systems, or data/AI platforms.
• StrongproficiencyinJava, Go, or Python, with experience building largescale services.
• Deep understanding of distributed system design, scalability, fault tolerance, andcloudnativearchitectures.
• Proven experience designing and operating production systems withSQL and NoSQL data stores.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience withLLMs, embeddings, vector databases, and AI orchestration frameworks.
• Exposure toagentic 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 committedto actively workingto foster an inclusive environment that celebrates peoplefor all of who they are.

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