Data Engineer
Engagement: Full-time, long-term
Work format: 100% remote, UK/CET time zone
Start: ASAP
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced Senior Azure Data Architect for a long-term enterprise project. The role focuses on Azure Data Platform architecture and on designing the data layer for applications that use GenAI, RAG and/or Agentic AI.
This is not an AI/ML Engineer position. Hands-on development of RAG solutions or AI agents is not expected. What matters is your experience designing the data architecture around such systems: how enterprise data and knowledge sources are ingested, processed, stored, governed and made available for retrieval and AI consumption.
The project involves working with an existing enterprise data platform: assessing it, stabilizing it and taking it through further modernization.
Responsibilities
- Analyze the current Azure data platform and identify key architecture, scalability, performance and data-quality issues
- Define tactical architecture for quick improvements and a long-term target architecture
- Design scalable Azure data architecture for enterprise workloads
- Design the data layer for RAG / GenAI / Agentic AI applications
- Define approaches to ingestion, preparation, storage, governance and retrieval of corporate data and knowledge sources
- Work with both structured and unstructured data
- Design reusable, metadata-driven ingestion architecture
- Make and justify architecture decisions across Cosmos DB, Synapse, Databricks, Azure SQL, Data Lake/Lakehouse and other Azure services
- Prepare detailed architecture documentation, diagrams and implementation-ready recommendations for engineering teams
- Move quickly from analysis of the existing system to concrete, actionable recommendations. The client expects meaningful architectural output within the first 1–2 weeks
Requirements
- Strong experience in enterprise Azure Data Architecture and ownership of architectural decisions
- Hands-on experience with Azure Cosmos DB (mandatory)
- Real production experience designing data architecture / the data layer for GenAI, RAG and/or Agentic AI applications
- Experience with Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Databricks
- Azure SQL MI / SQL Server / T-SQL
- Azure Data Lake / Lakehouse architecture
- Azure Functions
- Strong data modeling, ingestion and platform modernization experience
- Experience with both structured and genuinely unstructured data: documents, PDFs, scans, images, free text, emails, etc.
- Experience building metadata/configuration-driven ingestion and scalable data platforms
- Ability to make technology-neutral architecture decisions, choosing between Azure SQL, Synapse, ADF, Databricks, Lakehouse and others based on scale, cost and business requirements
- Experience working with existing/legacy data platforms and modernizing them
- Strong communication skills and the ability to work with both technical teams and business stakeholders
- English: ideally C1
Please note: candidates should be ready to discuss a real RAG/GenAI/Agentic AI project in detail: their role and ownership, preparation of source data and knowledge, metadata, chunking, embeddings, vector search/retrieval, storage and search technologies, and the use of Cosmos DB.
Location
- Priority: Serbia, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia
- Also considered: EU, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova
- Candidates who are physically located in Ukraine are not considered. Ukrainian citizenship is not a restriction if the candidate currently resides in another eligible country.
Hiring Process
- HR call
- Introduce call with client
- Technical interview (1 hour)
What You Will Gain
- Influence over enterprise-level architecture decisions
- Work at the intersection of Data Engineering and GenAI
- A long-term project with clear, meaningful goals
- Fully remote work with a UK/CET-aligned schedule