Consultant, Data & AI Engineer

IBM
IBM

Software Engineering, Data Science

tri-city, or, usa

Posted on Sep 12, 2026
Introduction

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You’ll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences.

Your role and responsibilities

We are looking for a Consultant, AI and Data Engineer to join our growing team of experts. This role sits at the intersection of data engineering and applied AI: you will build the Snowflake Data Cloud foundations that enterprise AI depends on, and you will build the AI solutions that run on top of them. The work spans data ingestion pipelines, data modeling and architecture, data governance and security, and the design, development, and deployment of LLM-based and machine learning applications for clients.

The ideal candidate is a strong pipeline builder who is equally comfortable preparing and modeling data for analytics as they are engineering retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, agentic workflows, and model-serving pipelines. You understand that AI solutions are only as good as the data behind them and you take ownership of both halves. You will work closely with solution architects, data analysts, and data scientists to deliver production-grade solutions across ongoing customer projects.

This position demands a self-directed individual comfortable working across the diverse data and AI needs of multiple teams, systems, and products in a client-facing, fast-paced consulting environment.

Responsibilities:

· Data Pipeline Development: Design, build, and operate ETL / ELT ingestion pipelines and data warehouse / lakehouse models on Snowflake, including structured and unstructured sources feeding downstream analytics and AI use cases.

· AI Solution Development: Build, evaluate, and deploy LLM-based applications (RAG, agents, document intelligence, conversational interfaces) and classical ML models that solve concrete client business problems.

· AI-Ready Data Engineering: Prepare, chunk, embed, and govern data for AI consumption, including vector search, feature pipelines, and semantic layers, with attention to data quality, lineage, and access control.

· Snowflake AI Platform: Implement solutions using Snowflake Cortex (LLM functions, Cortex Search, Cortex Analyst, Cortex Agents), Snowpark, and related services, and integrate with external model providers and cloud AI services where appropriate.

· Evaluation and Reliability: Define evaluation datasets and metrics for AI outputs, implement testing, observability, and guardrails, and iterate on prompts, retrieval, and model selection based on measured results.

· Implementation and Deployment: Deploy solutions to cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake) with CI/CD, version control, and infrastructure-as-code practices, ensuring scalability, cost efficiency, and performance.

· Client Engagement: Understand client requirements, present technical options and trade-offs, and work with client teams to integrate data and AI solutions into their business processes.

· Governance and Security: Apply data governance, privacy, and responsible AI practices, including PII handling, role-based access, and auditability, across both data and AI components.

· Documentation and Knowledge Transfer: Produce clear documentation for pipelines, models, prompts, and architectures to enable client handoff and internal reuse.

· Continuous Learning: Track developments in the Snowflake and AI ecosystems and bring practical recommendations to engagements and to the practice.

This job can be performed from anywhere in the US.

Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise

· Spanning data engineering (data management, database development, ETL / ELT, data warehousing) and applied AI or machine learning; consulting or professional services experience is highly desirable.

· Strong SQL and Python; experience with dbt, Spark, or Snowpark for transformation.

· Experience building ETL / ELT ingestion pipelines and developing data warehouses on a cloud data platform (Snowflake preferred; Redshift, BigQuery, Databricks also relevant).

· Hands-on experience building LLM-based applications: prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, vector stores and embeddings, and orchestration frameworks (for example LangChain, LlamaIndex, or equivalent).

· Working knowledge of ML fundamentals (supervised and unsupervised learning, model evaluation) and of the trade-offs between LLM, classical ML, and rules-based approaches.

· Proficiency with cloud platform services for data and AI workloads (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including managed database and data processing services.

· Experience with software engineering practices: Git-based version control, automated testing, CI/CD, and code review.

· Understanding of data governance, security, and compliance best practices as applied to both data pipelines and AI systems.

· Strong communication skills with the ability to explain data and AI concepts to non-technical stakeholders and build client relationships.

· Ability to work in cross-functional, Agile teams in a dynamic environment.·

Preferred technical and professional experience

· Snowflake Cortex Experience: Hands-on with Cortex LLM functions, Cortex Search, Cortex Analyst, Cortex Agents, or Snowpark Container Services; SnowPro certification a plus.

· Agentic Systems: Experience building multi-step or tool-using agents, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, and evaluating agent reliability.

· AI Evaluation and Observability: Experience with LLM evaluation frameworks, tracing, and monitoring in production.

· Ingestion Tooling: Fivetran, Matillion, Openflow / NiFi, or similar; streaming and real-time ingestion patterns.

· AI-Assisted Development: Proficiency with AI coding tools (for example Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) to accelerate delivery while maintaining code quality.

· Industry Context: Exposure to AI and data applications in healthcare, financial services, supply chain, or retail / CPG.

· Additional Languages: Scala or JavaScript.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.