Lead Data & AI Engineer

Company Overview:

Imagine working alongside over 4,000 talented individuals driven by a shared passion for excellence and innovation. We’re not just a company; we are a dynamic ecosystem of companies, including VASS, NATEEVO, Serbatic, vdSHOP, T4S, Comunytek, ECENTA, and CRI group. Our collective strength and the E4 Agile Method empower us to assist large enterprises in their digital transformation journey, executing ground-breaking projects from strategy to operation.

Global Impact, Local Commitment:

At VASS we are not just a business; we are committed to society. In 2019, we established the VASS Foundation to champion research and training in the digital talent space. We proudly allocate 2% of our profits and encourage our entire team to dedicate 1% of their time to impactful solidarity actions. It is not just about growing the bottom line; it’s about growing together, hand in hand with the community we serve .

About the role

We are looking for a highly skilled Lead Data & AI Engineer to join our Data & AI practice and lead the technical implementation of modern Data Products, AI-powered Analytics Solutions and Intelligence Platforms built on modern cloud data platforms.

This is a hands-on technical role focused on designing and implementing production-ready solutions that combine Data Engineering, Analytics and Generative AI capabilities. The successful candidate will act as the technical lead during delivery, translating high-level architectures and business requirements into scalable and maintainable solutions.

The role requires a strong balance between technical depth, solution design capabilities and stakeholder interaction.

The ideal candidate is:

• A senior hands-on engineer, not a pure architect.
• Comfortable designing and implementing solutions.
• Capable of leading technical delivery teams.
• Able to work directly with business stakeholders when refining requirements.
• Passionate about modern Data & AI technologies.
• Experienced in taking solutions from concept to production.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments and defining implementation approaches.

Experience

• 6+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering or AI Engineering.
• 3+ years of experience leading technical delivery of Data or AI initiatives.
• Proven experience delivering enterprise-grade solutions on Snowflake or similar platforms.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership

• Lead the technical implementation of Data & AI solutions from design through production deployment.
• Own detailed solution design and technical architecture decisions.
• Translate business and functional requirements into technical specifications.
• Act as the technical reference point for delivery teams.
• Participate in client workshops and technical discussions.

Data Engineering & Data Products

• Design and implement scalable Data Products on Snowflake and modern cloud data platforms.
• Develop and optimize data ingestion, transformation and serving layers.
• Design and implement semantic and business data models.
• Build curated data layers to support analytics, intelligence and AI use cases.
• Ensure data quality, observability and performance across the platform.
• Implement scalable ELT/ETL pipelines using modern engineering practices.

AI & Generative AI

• Design and implement AI-powered business capabilities leveraging enterprise data.
• Develop AI-generated insights, summaries, recommendations and intelligence use cases.
• Build Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions.
• Implement semantic search and vector-based retrieval architectures.
• Design and optimize prompts, evaluation mechanisms and AI workflows.
• Leverage Snowflake capabilities
• AI-powered SQL functions

Solution Design

• Define detailed technical designs aligned with enterprise architecture standards.
• Evaluate implementation approaches and technology trade-offs.
• Contribute to architecture evolution and innovation initiatives.
• Produce technical documentation and implementation blueprints.

Required Skills

Data Engineering

• Advanced SQL development.
• Strong Python programming skills.
• Data modelling (dimensional and modern analytical models).
• ELT/ETL design and implementation.
• Experience with modern data transformation frameworks such as dbt.
• Data quality and observability practices.
• Snowflake Ecosystem (Data Cloud, Snowflake SQL, Snowpark, Streams & Tasks, Secure Data Sharing, Governance & Security, Snowflake Cortex AI capabilities).

AI & Generative AI

• Practical implementation experience with:
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Prompt Engineering
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Embeddings and Vector Search
• AI evaluation and testing
• Enterprise AI solution development

Experience with one or more of:

• Snowflake Cortex
• Azure OpenAI
• OpenAI APIs
• Anthropic Claude
• LangChain
• Semantic Search solutions

Cloud Platforms

Experience with at least one:

• Azure
• AWS
• GCP

Engineering Practices

• Git and version control.
• CI/CD pipelines.
• DevOps and deployment automation.
• Agile delivery methodologies.
• Testing and code quality practices.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Snowflake.
• Experience with Databricks.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience building Data Products.

VASS is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit, and business needs, without regard to race, religion, colour, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, marital status, or disability status. Join us in shaping the future of digital transformation.