Lead Data Engineer – Remote Contract

About the role

We are looking for a Lead Data Engineer to design and scale the data infrastructure behind an AI platform that automates operations for property‑management businesses. This is a remote, contract‑based position where you will be the first senior data hire, shaping the data function and working closely with AI, backend, product and leadership teams.

Key responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable data pipelines and infrastructure for AI and product systems.
• Design, implement and maintain data ingestion, transformation and storage solutions for both operational and AI workloads.
• Develop batch and real‑time pipelines, including vector‑search and machine‑learning data flows.
• Ensure data reliability, security, governance and observability across the platform.
• Collaborate with AI and backend engineers to support model training, inference and new product features.
• Define data‑engineering standards, best practices and hiring criteria as the founding data member.
• Contribute to technical architecture decisions and long‑term data strategy.

Required profile

• 7+ years of professional experience, primarily in data‑engineering roles.
• Proven ability to design and justify architectural decisions, not just implement them.
• Experience leading or defining a data function within a fast‑growing tech company.

Required skills

• Strong Python programming.
• Deep knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred, MySQL acceptable).
• Experience with NoSQL databases.
• Familiarity with vector databases used in modern AI systems.
• Design and implementation of distributed data pipelines and batch/real‑time processing.
• Data modeling, storage architecture, and data governance.
• Monitoring, observability and data‑quality frameworks.