# Staff R&D Software Engineer, Fivetran AI

**Company:** [Fivetran](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/fivetran)
**Location:** New York, NY, Denver, CO, Austin, TX
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $196k – $245k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Python, Java, SQL, dbt, LLMs, Vector Databases, BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks, mcp protocol, React, TypeScript, Kubernetes, RAG, Embeddings
**Posted:** 2026-07-21

> Staff R&D Software Engineer building the governed context layer (Agents Schema and Context Builder) for trustworthy AI agents. Research AI techniques, prototype, ship full-stack production features, own reliability/SRE/QA, define technical direction across teams, and mentor others in a startup-like environment.

## Job Description

## What You’ll Do
- Research emerging techniques in retrieval, reasoning, and agentic AI, decide what’s worth pursuing for the roadmap, and convince others.
- Prototype new ideas quickly and turn proven ones into shipped, production-grade features.
- Define technical direction spanning multiple teams, ensuring architecture decisions align across areas.
- Build and maintain back-end and front-end systems for Fivetran AI, including Agents Schema pipelines and Context Catalog UI.
- Drive the AISQL capability: natural language to SQL grounded in dbt metric definitions, executed against the warehouse.
- Own production reliability: on-call rotation, incident response, and SRE work.
- Set the bar for testing and QA practices; perform hands-on QA when needed.
- Use coding agents to automate repetitive tasks, freeing time for research and design.
- Take high-level direction from product and leadership; independently define and execute concrete plans.
- Mentor other engineers and raise the technical bar across the team.
- Contribute to hiring by shaping and participating in the interview process.

## Skills We’re Looking For
- 8+ years of programming experience across Python and/or Java, with ability to move between back-end and front-end.
- Trusted expert beyond your team, able to influence and define technical direction across multiple teams.
- Comfortable reading AI/ML research and turning findings into prototypes then production systems.
- Strong product and market awareness to judge emerging techniques vs. hype.
- Track record of taking ambiguous direction and independently defining/executing work.
- Experience with SQL and data warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks, or similar).
- Willingness to work across full stack: research, backend, frontend, SRE, and QA.
- Writes well-structured, performant code; can dive into unfamiliar codebases.
- Experience using coding agents or AI tooling to accelerate engineering work.
- Ability to mentor engineers and influence decisions beyond immediate team.
- Thrives in startup-like environment with shifting priorities and high ownership.

## Bonus Skills
- Experience with LLM-powered applications (RAG pipelines, embeddings, evaluation frameworks, agent frameworks).
- Familiarity with semantic layers (dbt, LookML, Sigma, or similar).
- Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or building AI agent integrations.
- Background in site reliability engineering (monitoring, alerting, incident response).
- Experience in data processing (ETL/ELT) or building data connectors.
- Experience in cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker).
- Contributions to open source AI or data projects.

## Technologies You’ll Use
- Python, Java, SQL, dbt
- LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini)
- Vector databases
- BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks
- MCP protocol
- React, TypeScript
- Kubernetes

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