Lead AI Data Engineer

Lead AI Data Engineer – Azure | Fintech AI Lab

Location: Abu DhabiMy client is looking for a Data Architect to join a newly established AI Lab.

This is a key role responsible for designing the data architecture, platforms and foundations that will enable the bank to scale AI, analytics and data-driven products.The ideal candidate will be a strong Azure-focused Data Architect with deep hands-on experience designing modern enterprise data platforms and a solid understanding of how data architecture needs to support AI, machine learning, analytics and GenAI workloads.Key Responsibilities

• Define and own the enterprise data architecture supporting AI, analytics and data products.
• Design scalable, secure and high-performance Azure data platforms and architectures.
• Develop modern data lake, lakehouse and data warehouse architectures.
• Define data ingestion, integration, transformation, storage and consumption patterns across the organisation.
• Work closely with Data Engineers, Data Scientists, AI Engineers, Software Engineers and Product teams to ensure data platforms support production AI use cases.
• Establish standards for data modelling, data governance, data quality, metadata, lineage and security.
• Design architectures supporting both structured and unstructured data, including data required for GenAI and RAG applications.
• Provide architectural direction across real-time, batch and streaming data workloads.
• Assess emerging Azure and data technologies and determine their suitability for enterprise adoption.
• Ensure architecture meets banking requirements around security, privacy, regulatory compliance, resilience and scalability.
• Help establish the technical foundations and standards for the new AI Lab.Azure Technology StackStrong experience across the Microsoft Azure data ecosystem is essential, ideally including:
• Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
• Azure Data Factory / Synapse Pipelines
• Azure Synapse Analytics
• Microsoft Fabric and/or modern lakehouse architectures
• Azure Databricks
• Azure Event Hubs / streaming technologies
• Azure SQL / Cosmos DB
• Microsoft Purview
• Azure security, networking and identity services
• Azure AI / Azure OpenAI and data architectures supporting GenAI and RAGIdeal Candidate
• 10+ years' experience across Data Architecture, Data Engineering or Enterprise Data Platforms.
• Strong track record designing large-scale enterprise data architectures.
• Deep practical experience with Azure data technologies and cloud-native architecture.
• Strong understanding of data lakehouse, data warehouse, data mesh and modern data platform patterns.
• Experience with large-scale data integration, ETL/ELT, batch and streaming architectures.
• Strong knowledge of data modelling, governance, lineage, quality and security.
• Experience designing data platforms to support AI/ML and GenAI workloads.
• Strong understanding of cloud architecture, APIs, microservices and distributed systems.
• Experience within banking, financial services, fintech or another highly regulated environment would be highly advantageous.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work with both senior stakeholders and highly technical engineering teams.What Will Differentiate YouMy client is looking for a hands-on, technically credible Data Architect, rather than someone purely focused on governance or high-level documentation.The strongest candidates will have a deep Azure technical foundation, have personally designed modern data platforms at scale, and understand how to build the data foundations required to support AI, analytics and GenAI in a banking environment.This is an opportunity to join the AI Lab at an early stage and play a significant role in defining the data architecture and technology standards that will underpin its future AI capabilities*** Only successful candidates will be contacted ***