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AI & Data Engineer [Interim]

  • Hybrid
    • Rotterdam

Job description

Job Title: AI & Data Engineer [Interim]
Location: (Hybrid) Rotterdam
Engagement: Full-time, 5 days a week

Contract duration: 3-6 months (possibe extension)

Start date: ASAP

Context

A large, international company in the engineering sector is scaling production-grade AI across the organization. The Data & AI Platform team is expanding delivery capacity and is looking for an interim Data & AI Engineer who can step in immediately, take ownership of AI use cases end-to-end, and accelerate adoption across business teams on an Azure + Databricks foundation.

This is a hands-on delivery role with high autonomy: you will build, ship, operate, and improve AI solutions in production—while introducing reusable components and pragmatic best practices that raise the bar across the platform.

What you’ll do

  • Deliver AI use cases end-to-end: from ingestion and feature engineering to model/agent development and production rollout.

  • Design and operate Databricks lakehouse pipelines (batch and streaming) using Spark/SQL/Delta Lake, including monitoring and data quality controls.

  • Build AI solutions on the platform, including:

    • RAG patterns (retrieval, chunking, embeddings, evaluation)

    • tool-using agents and orchestration approaches

    • prompt strategies and testing/guardrails

    • (where relevant) custom ML models and supporting pipelines

  • Productionize and run what you build: reliability, observability, cost control, and operational hygiene.

  • Enable other teams by creating reusable components, templates, and delivery standards.

  • Work with governance and compliance: align with AI governance requirements and ensure solutions are secure and auditable.

  • Collaborate with stakeholders across IT and the business to translate needs into working solutions and clear delivery increments.

What success looks like (first weeks)

  • Rapidly understand the current Azure/Databricks landscape and delivery priorities.

  • Pick up 1–2 active use cases and move them toward production-quality standards.

  • Strengthen delivery patterns (templates, evaluation approach, monitoring, data quality checks).

  • Create momentum with visible working increments and pragmatic documentation.

Required experience

  • Proven experience as a Data Engineer / Data & AI Engineer delivering solutions into production environments.

  • Strong hands-on Databricks expertise: Spark/SQL, Delta Lake, Jobs/Workflows, performance tuning.

  • Strong Python + SQL for data engineering and AI/ML workflows.

  • Experience building data pipelines with quality checks and operational monitoring.

  • Practical experience with LLM-based solutions (RAG and/or agents), including prompt strategies and evaluation approaches.

  • Comfortable working independently in an interim context: you can own delivery, communicate clearly, and unblock yourself.

Nice to have

  • Azure services exposure (e.g., Azure ML, Azure OpenAI, Key Vault, Functions, ADF).

  • LLM toolkits (LangChain, Semantic Kernel), prompt evaluation frameworks, early LLMOps patterns.

  • CI/CD (GitHub Actions) and Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform).

  • ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn) where needed.

Why this assignment

  • Immediate impact: deliver AI use cases into production on a modern Azure Databricks platform.

  • High ownership and autonomy: a true interim role where delivery outcomes matter.

  • Real-world relevance: projects tied to large-scale operations in a complex, safety- and compliance-aware environment.

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