NEXTDATA IS LOOKING FOR AN EXPERIENCED AI PLATFORM ENGINEER FOR AN INITIAL THREE-MONTH PROJECT FOCUSED ON BUILDING AND VALIDATING AN AI-ENABLED DATA PLATFORM CAPABILITY. THIS IS A HANDS-ON IMPLEMENTATION ROLE. YOU WILL QUICKLY RAMP UP ON AN EXISTING PROJECT AND BUILD BACKEND SERVICES, AGENT TOOLS, APIS, AND DATA INTEGRATIONS. THE ROLE HAS NO CUSTOMER-FACING RESPONSIBILITIES AND LESS EMPHASIS ON ARCHITECTURE THAN A PRINCIPAL-LEVEL POSITION. IF SUCCESSFUL, THE PROJECT MAY CONTINUE AND DEVELOP INTO A BROADER NEXTDATA PRODUCT. WHAT YOU’LL DO * Quickly understand the existing codebase, requirements, and technical direction. * Build backend services, AI agents, tools, and APIs for governed data access. * Implement MCP-compatible endpoints or similar agent interfaces. * Integrate SQL, documents, APIs, metadata, semantic models, and vector search. * Build retrieval, tool selection, context construction, and grounded response flows. * Add access controls, policy enforcement, audit logging, tests, and observability. * Deliver a reliable, documented system within the three-month project scope. * WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR * Strong experience with backend systems, data platforms, or distributed systems. * Practical experience building agentic AI applications using LangChain, LangGraph, or similar frameworks. * Experience with RAG, retrieval, semantic search, tool calling, and multi-step agent workflows. * Strong Python and API development skills. * Experience with SQL, documents, metadata systems, and vector search. * Familiarity with MCP or similar agent interfaces. * Understanding of access control, policies, lineage, data quality, PII protection, and auditability. * Ability to become productive quickly in an unfamiliar codebase. * Good judgment on scope, trade-offs, and production readiness. NICE TO HAVE * Experience with data products, data mesh, semantic models, catalogs, or governance platforms. * Experience with MCP servers, tool registries, or multi-step agents. * Experience with Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, DuckDB, Postgres, graph databases, or vector databases. * Familiarity with OAuth, OIDC, SAML, SSO, RBAC, ABAC, SCIM, or policy engines. * Experience evaluating retrieval quality, tool accuracy, groundedness, and failure modes. CONTRACT SCOPE * Initial term: three to four months. * Focus: hands-on implementation and delivery. * No customer-facing responsibilities. * Potential extension if the project is successful.