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# AI Platform Engineer

- **Company:** NEXTDATA LLC
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Experienced
- **Contract:** Temporary contract
- **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Audit Trail, BigQuery, Data Integration, Data Security, Distributed Systems, Graph Database, Python (Programming Language), PostgreSQL, Metadata, OAuth, OpenID, Role-Based Access Control, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Search Technologies, Single Sign-On, SQL Databases, Snowflake, Apache Spark, Backend, Data Management, Api Design, Databricks
- **Published:** September 4, 2026
- **Apply:** https://startup.jobs/senior-ai-platform-engineer-contract-nextdata-com-8768593

## About the Role

* 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.

## Description

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., * 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.
*


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