Data Engineer (WFH)

About ERNI

ERNI is a consulting company founded in 1994 that helps businesses improve their performance through innovation and technology. With around 800 employees across 18 locations in 8 countries, ERNI works with clients to simplify processes, advance digital transformation, and develop effective technology solutions.

About the Role

ERNI is looking for a Data Engineer to build and maintain the data foundations needed for AI, analytics, and automated business processes. You will design and implement data pipelines and integration solutions that make structured and unstructured data reliable, secure, traceable, and ready for practical use.

The role combines hands-on data engineering with client consulting. You will work with databases, APIs, documents, event streams, cloud storage, data warehouses, lakehouses, and modern data platforms. You will also support machine learning and generative AI initiatives by preparing data for model training, evaluation, retrieval, and AI-powered applications.

As part of ERNI's Data & AI team, you will collaborate with AI/ML engineers, software engineers, architects, and consultants. You will also help clients identify valuable data use cases, assess their feasibility, and turn business needs into practical technical solutions.

Key Responsibilities

•Design and implement reliable data ingestion, transformation, integration, and delivery pipelines for AI, analytics, and business automation.

•Integrate structured and unstructured data from databases, APIs, documents, enterprise applications, event streams, and other relevant sources.

•Develop data products, datasets, feature pipelines, and retrieval-ready knowledge bases for machine learning and generative AI.

•Implement data quality checks, validation processes, observability, monitoring, and procedures for handling data errors.

•Work on document processing, metadata extraction, classification, data enrichment, and information retrieval.

•Implement data security, access controls, privacy measures, lineage, metadata management, and governance practices.

•Maintain transparency around data origins, ownership, quality, and usage.

•Collaborate with AI/ML engineers on training and evaluation datasets, feature engineering, retrieval data, and test cases.

•Work with software engineers on APIs, services, deployment, and the operation of data and AI solutions.

•Lead or support exploratory client workshops to identify data opportunities, assess AI readiness, and define actionable implementation plans.

•Contribute to technical pre-sales activities, including discovery sessions, solution workshops, effort estimates, proposals, and client presentations.

•Help develop and expand ERNI's Data & AI service portfolio.

Required Qualifications

•A degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Engineering, or a comparable qualification.

•Several years of experience in Data Engineering, Data Architecture, Analytics Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field.

•Strong knowledge of Python and SQL.

•Practical experience with data processing, orchestration, and integration frameworks.

•Experience with relational and non-relational databases, data warehouses, lakehouses, cloud storage, and modern data platforms.

•Working knowledge of APIs, event streams, integration technologies, and production data pipelines.

•Experience with data quality, lineage, metadata, governance, privacy, access controls, and the secure handling of sensitive information.

•Ability to process both structured and unstructured data, including documents and knowledge sources.

•Practical knowledge of machine learning, generative AI, large language models (LLMs), embeddings, vector search, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

•Experience preparing data for model training, evaluation, retrieval, and AI-enabled business processes.

•Understanding of software architecture, APIs, testing, CI/CD, observability, and the operation of data and AI services.

•Ability to translate business challenges into technical data solutions and explain data quality, availability, ownership, security, governance, cost, and feasibility to different stakeholders.

•Strong communication and workshop facilitation skills when working with technical decision-makers, business leaders, and other stakeholders.

•Very good German and English skills, at least at C1 level in both languages.

•An innovative, entrepreneurial, and pragmatic approach to solving problems, with the ability to recognise when better data foundations or processes are more valuable than adding another AI feature.

Preferred Qualifications

•Experience integrating cloud-based or locally hosted AI services and models into data pipelines, platforms, or applications.

•Familiarity with data assessments, migration approaches, solution consulting, technical pre-sales, effort estimation, and proposal preparation.

•An interest in taking responsibility for client discovery, solution design, and consulting activities.

Benefits and Work Arrangements

•Individual development programmes to support professional and personal growth.

•Remote work from outside Switzerland, within Europe, for up to five weeks per year.

•Flexible working hours to support work-life balance.

•Team-building activities and company events throughout the year.

•Generous pension contributions, with ERNI covering two-thirds of the pension contributions and employees covering the remaining one-third.

Additional Information

This role combines technical data engineering, AI enablement, and client-facing consulting. Candidates should be comfortable contributing to hands-on implementation while helping clients define practical, secure, and scalable data solutions.