Senior Forward Deployed Data Engineer

Akkio

1d•Remote

About The Position

As a Senior Forward Deployed Data Engineer at Akkio, you will work directly with our media agency customers, embedded in their environments to solve their most pressing data challenges. You'll own end-to-end technical delivery of customer implementations, building bespoke data pipelines and integrations that unlock the full power of Akkio's AI platform for each client's unique needs. As a customer liaison, you will serve as the technical bridge between their teams and ours. The ideal candidate is an excellent communicator with an intuitive understanding of customer requirements, expertise in both SQL and Python, and ability to work across both application and database technologies. This role requires regular travel to customer sites to work face-to-face with media agencies who value a hands-on partnership. Your insights from the field will directly shape Akkio's product direction and help define how the media industry leverages AI. This is a unique opportunity to join a well-funded, early-stage AI startup and shape the future of AI-powered marketing analytics while working with a talented team.

Requirements

5+ years of experience as a data engineer with proven ability to deliver complex projects in customer-facing or consulting environments
Strong SQL skills and experience with at least one large cloud database (especially Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks)
Strong data modeling skills, including when to normalize vs denormalize data and understanding of various schema design patterns.
Expert in Python for production data pipelines, with experience using modern orchestration tools like dbt or Airflow
Experience building large scale backend services in Python
Excellent communication skills. Equally comfortable presenting to C-level executives and debugging code with engineers
Excited by customer-facing work and energized by seeing your solutions drive real business impact
Skilled at prompting and working with AI systems for data tasks, leveraging LLMs for data transformation, cleaning, schema mapping, and analysis
Strong bias to execution coupled with high engineering standards and attention to detail
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience)
Must be authorized to work in the US

Nice To Haves

Strong experience with large language models (LLMs) and their applications in data analytics
Experienced at integrating AI tools into data workflows to accelerate delivery and improve data quality
Knowledge of data visualization and analytics tools
Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
Understanding of security best practices for handling sensitive data
Previous startup experience, particularly in early-stage companies

Responsibilities

Embed directly with media agency customers to understand their data infrastructure, workflows, and business objectives
Own end-to-end technical delivery of customer implementations from initial scoping through production deployment and ongoing optimization
Design and build custom data pipelines, integrations, and transformations that connect customer data sources to Akkio's AI platform
Take full ownership of complex data engineering projects from planning to deployment
Implement security and compliance measures to protect sensitive client data
Build and maintain production data infrastructure with proper monitoring, alerting, and documentation Feed learnings from customer deployments back to the product team to influence platform roadmap and feature development
Establish trusted advisor relationships with customer technical and business stakeholders
Navigate diverse technical environments and adapt solutions to each customer's existing data infrastructure
Travel regularly to customer sites for onboarding, implementation sprints, and strategic planning sessions
Mentor junior engineers and establish data engineering best practices
Communicate project milestones and progress clearly to stakeholders