Senior Data / AI Application Engineer

Role Description

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to build internal applications on top of DDN’s enterprise data platform. This is a largely greenfield charter — a new function dedicated to full-stack tools and AI-powered services for GTM, Finance, Support, and Product. We are building applications that surface data for decision-making and applications that improve and automate the operational processes that run the business. You’ll have early prototypes to learn from, but the mandate is to define this product portfolio and build it out. Data and analytics engineers own what’s underneath; the applications themselves — frontend, backend, deployment, model integration — are yours.

What You’ll Own

• Internal applications — design, build, and operate full-stack web apps (FastAPI/Flask + React/TypeScript today, but technology choices are open) that put data and AI into stakeholders’ hands — both as decision-support interfaces and as purpose-built tools that let them do operational work.
• AI/LLM integration — build features powered by LLMs and ML — classification, extraction, summarization, copilots, agentic workflows — choosing whichever models, providers, and frameworks fit the problem.
• Application infrastructure — deploy and operate apps on GCP (App Engine, Cloud Run, GKE), connect them to the data platform, manage auth, own CI/CD and app security.
• Product surface — define what good looks like for this new function: which problems are worth a custom app vs. a BI dashboard, what our reusable building blocks should be, and how we ship reliable, observable services people depend on.
• Collaboration — partner with stakeholders to scope the right tool for the job, with analytics engineers to shape the underlying data models, and with data engineers on platform constraints.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building production software, with meaningful time spent on full-stack web applications.
• Strong Python — APIs (FastAPI, Flask, or similar), data access patterns, packaging, testing.
• TypeScript/React (or comparable framework), component design, interactive data UIs.
• Hands-on experience with GCP application services — App Engine, Cloud Run, GKE, IAM.
• Strong SQL and comfort working with cloud data warehouses (BigQuery in our case) — you can write a query, understand its cost, and design an app’s data access layer around it.
• Experience developing and deploying AI/LLM-powered applications in production — prompt design, structured output, evaluation, cost/latency tradeoffs, awareness that the model and tooling landscape changes quickly.
• Experience operating what you ship — logging, monitoring, error handling, debugging in production.
• Experience with software engineering best practices: CI/CD, automated testing, observability, secure application design.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to Have

• Experience building AI-native applications such as text-to-SQL interfaces, copilots, agentic workflows, or automated insight-generation systems.
• Hands-on experience with one or more LLM provider APIs (Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI, Google, open-weight models, etc.) and agent frameworks (Claude Agent SDK, LangGraph, or similar).
• Experience with managed AI/ML platforms (Vertex AI, SageMaker, or similar) — model serving, embeddings, evaluation tooling.
• Familiarity with dbt and modern data warehouse patterns from a consumer’s perspective.
• Experience with Airflow for triggered jobs and background work.
• Familiarity with Terraform for managing application infrastructure.
• Background designing data-heavy UIs — tables, drill-downs, large result sets, interactive exploration.
• Prior experience as the first or only application engineer on a data team — comfort owning the full lifecycle.

Salary Range

$185,000 - $200,000

Company Description

• DDN has a very strong orientation towards these 4 characteristics and any successful employee will demonstrate these capabilities:
• Self-Starter - Takes independent action to identify and solve problems. Seeks out relevant information needed to make decisions. Gets involved with new initiatives.
• Success/Achievement Orientation - Delivers quality results consistently. Targets, achieves (or exceeds) measurable results. Sets challenging goals, focuses on critical priorities, and is accountable.
• Problem Solving - Recognizes problems and responds with a systematic assessment that identifies and addresses cause of issue. Practical, realistic, and resourceful.
• Innovative - Builds and improves key business processes that enhance the effectiveness of DDN. Generates new ideas, challenges the status quo, and solves problems creatively.