AI Data Engineering Manager

BDO USA, P.C. • Grand Rapids, MI

4h • $150,000 - $175,000

About The Position

The IT Data Engineering Manager, AI Initiatives is expected to use strong business acumen, technical depth, and leadership skills to guide the Data Engineering team in designing, building, and operating the data pipelines and infrastructure that power the Firm's artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) initiatives. This role partners with data scientists, AI/ML engineers, and business stakeholders to translate AI use cases into scalable data solutions, including data ingestion, feature engineering, model training and evaluation datasets, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines that support large language models (LLMs).

This role manages the Data Engineering team to identify, curate, and prepare the Firm's data assets so they are trustworthy, well-governed, and ready for use in AI applications, driving better operational efficiencies and better client outcomes through data-driven, AI-enabled insights and actions. In collaboration with data architects, data scientists, and other IT teams (such as Business Analysts, MLOps Engineers, and Project Managers), this role helps develop standard processes, procedures, and guidelines that ensure the effective and efficient delivery of sustainable AI data solutions, following design standards, responsible AI practices, and appropriate IT and user testing.

Finally, this role provides support in developing strategies, policies, and governance models to ensure data used in AI systems remains accurate, timely, secure, and relevant to the Firm's AI strategy and goals.

Requirements

• High School Diploma or GED, required
• Six (6) or more years working as a data engineer, analyst, or extract/transform/load (ETL) developer, required
• Three (3) or more years of demonstrable proficiency in successfully leading other developers or engineers in delivering complex data integration and/or AI/ML data solutions, required
• Two (2) or more years working on data pipelines, feature engineering, or data preparation directly supporting machine learning, generative AI, or large language model (LLM) initiatives, required
• Strong proficiency in the use of the Microsoft Office suite, specifically Excel, required
• Three (3) or more years working with PowerBI, Tableau, or similar data visualization products, required
• Demonstrable proficiency in developing and understanding custom and ad-hoc SQL queries, required

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Management, Mathematics, or Statistics, preferred
• Experience working with vector databases, embeddings, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures, preferred
• Experience with Python and common data/ML engineering frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark, Airflow, Databricks), preferred
• Experience working within a large, complex enterprise with significant regulatory and compliance requirements, preferred
• Professional service firm experience, preferred
• Three (3) or more years working within commercial cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, including their AI/ML services (e.g., Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Foundry, AWS Bedrock, AWS SageMaker), preferred
• Familiarity with AI/ML platforms and tooling (e.g., Databricks, Fabric Notebooks, Snowflake Cortex, Azure AI Foundry, AWS SageMaker, or similar), preferred

Responsibilities

• Ensures the Data Engineering team works effectively with data scientists, AI/ML engineers, and data architects to appropriately define and design data pipelines that support the Firm's AI initiatives
• Continually increases the maturity of data engineering practices and processes to ensure proper planning, controls, documentation, and monitoring are in place to deliver high-quality, sustainable data products for AI and analytics use cases
• Collaborates with project managers and AI/ML teams to provide effort estimates, and provides technical leadership in the design of data pipelines, feature stores, and data solutions supporting model training, fine-tuning, and inference
• Acts as a subject matter expert and catalyst to educate the organization on the Firm's data platforms and best practices as they relate to the usage, hygiene, and readiness of data for AI and generative AI applications
• Meets regularly with line of business customers and data science teams to gain a better understanding of their evolving AI use cases and data needs in order to identify potential AI-related data projects
• Works with data scientists and AI engineers to build and maintain pipelines that ingest, cleanse, transform, and structure data for machine learning models, large language models (LLMs), and generative AI solutions, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and vector database integration
• Builds and maintains constructive working relationships with project team members, vendors, and other departments involved with AI projects, systems, and IT strategies
• Ensures data governance, data quality, and responsible AI principles (including data privacy, bias mitigation, and appropriate use of client and Firm data) are followed throughout the course of day-to-day data usage and AI solution design
• Identifies and executes continuous improvement efforts regarding data and AI operations, including monitoring for data drift and pipeline reliability, to ensure the Firm's AI systems remain accurate and timely
• Works closely with the Information Security, Compliance, and Data Governance teams to ensure the Firm's AI data strategy and technologies meet or exceed both internal policies and external regulatory requirements
• Collaborates with BDO Global and other BDO member firms to ensure standards between organizations are followed in support of reusable AI/ML models, feature stores, and rapid deployment of shared AI technology
• Evaluates and recommends emerging data and AI platforms, tools, and services (such as cloud-based AI/ML services, vector databases, and orchestration frameworks) to support scalable, secure AI initiatives
• Understands and follows project management basics and project management office policies and procedures
• Other duties as required

Benefits

• ESOP company, offering participants a stake in the firm’s success through beneficial ownership and a unique opportunity to enhance their financial well-being.
• Comprehensive compensation and Total Rewards benefit offerings.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: High school or GED