Data Engineer, Specialist - DADES3001

Build Data Products That Matter

• Design and build scalable data platforms, pipelines, and services that power analytics, business decisions, machine learning, and AI-enabled solutions.
• Transform complex, high-volume, and messy datasets into trusted, well-governed data products that teams depend on every day.
• Create reusable frameworks, APIs, and self-service capabilities that improve data accessibility and developer productivity.
• Design data models and architectures optimized for analytics, reporting, AI, and advanced data workloads.
• Continuously improve platform performance, scalability, reliability, observability, and security.

Engineer Smarter with AI

• Leverage AI-assisted development tools to accelerate coding, testing, debugging, documentation, and solution design while maintaining high quality standards.
• Apply AI to eliminate repetitive work, automate engineering tasks, and improve delivery efficiency.
• Experiment with emerging AI engineering capabilities and identify opportunities to improve team productivity and software quality.
• Use engineering judgment to validate AI-generated outputs and ensure solutions remain secure, maintainable, and production-ready.
• Help define and evolve best practices for AI-augmented software development across the organization.

Solve Complex Problems

• Tackle challenging data integration, data quality, performance, and reliability problems across enterprise-scale systems.
• Investigate production issues, identify root causes, and implement long-term solutions rather than temporary fixes.
• Design robust monitoring, alerting, lineage, and observability capabilities that increase trust in data.
• Improve processes and systems so that teams can focus more time on innovation and less time on operational overhead.

Collaborate and Lead

• Partner with analysts, data scientists, architects, software engineers, and business stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions.
• Translate business objectives into scalable technical architectures and implementation strategies.
• Lead initiatives from design through deployment and operational support.
• Mentor engineers, share knowledge, conduct thoughtful code reviews, and help raise the engineering bar across the team.
• Contribute to innovation initiatives, proof-of-concepts, hackathons, and emerging technology experiments.

What We're Looking For

Technical Foundations

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering, software engineering, analytics engineering, or related technical disciplines.
• Proven experience designing and implementing scalable data pipelines and cloud-based data platforms.
• Strong expertise in SQL, data modeling, and relational and non-relational database technologies.
• Strong programming skills in Python and at least one additional language such as Scala or Java.
• Experience with modern cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Hands-on experience with technologies such as Spark, Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, Hadoop, or similar modern data platforms.
• Strong understanding of data quality, governance, security, observability, lineage, and operational excellence practices.

AI-Augmented Engineering Mindset

We're less interested in whether you've memorized every AI acronym and more interested in how you think.

Successful candidates will typically demonstrate

• Experience using AI coding assistants and AI-enabled engineering tools to improve productivity and software quality.
• Curiosity about emerging technologies and a willingness to experiment with new approaches.
• The ability to combine AI-generated outputs with sound engineering judgment.
• A mindset focused on continuous learning, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• A belief that great engineers don't compete with AI. They learn how to partner with it.

Leadership and Collaboration

• Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing engineering decisions.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and transform ideas into practical solutions.
• Passion for mentoring teammates and helping others grow.
• A bias toward ownership, curiosity, and continuous improvement.

Bonus Points!

We'll be especially excited if you have experience with

• Machine learning, GenAI, agentic AI, or advanced analytics platforms.
• Building data products that support AI and machine learning workloads.
• Platform engineering, Infrastructure as Code, DevOps, and CI/CD automation.
• Using AI to significantly improve engineering productivity, quality, or delivery outcomes.
• Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake, or related technical certifications.
• Open-source contributions, technical blogging, public speaking, or engineering community leadership.

We believe modern engineering is about more than writing code .

Special Factors

Sponsorship

Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.

About Vanguard

At Vanguard, we don't just have a mission—we're on a mission.

To work for the long-term financial wellbeing of our clients. To lead through product and services that transform our clients' lives. To learn and develop our skills as individuals and as a team. From Malvern to Melbourne, our mission drives us forward and inspires us to be our best.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.