Principal Data Engineer, GenAI

Benefits Overview

A career at CoBank can offer you the opportunity to make a personal impact on the people and communities where we do business. In order to be the best, we hire the best!

Remarkable Benefits Offered by CoBank

• Careers with a purpose
• Time-Off Packages, 20 days of vacation, 10 paid sick days and 11 paid holidays
• Competitive Compensation & Incentive
• Hybrid work model: flexible arrangements for most positions
• Benefits Packages, including Medical, Dental and Vision coverage, Disability, AD&D, and Life Insurance
• Robust associate training and development with CoBank University
• Tuition reimbursement for higher education up to $10k per year
• Outstanding 401k: up to 6% matching and additional 3% non-elective contribution & Student Loan Match
• Community Impact: United Way Angel Day, Volunteer Day and Associate Directed Contribution
• Associate Resource Groups: creating a culture of respect and inclusion
• Recognize a fellow associate through our GEM awards

Job Description

We are seeking a Principal Data Engineer, GenAI to lead the integration of generative AI capabilities into our data platform. In this role, you will blend deep expertise in data engineering with cutting-edge AI/ML integration, building scalable pipelines and infrastructure that power next-generation AI applications. You will design and optimize data architecture and pipelines (both batch and real-time) to support Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and adapter-based fine-tuning of LLMs using proprietary domain data, leveraging cloud-native technologies (primarily AWS) and open-source tools. This role requires close collaboration with cross-functional teams (Data Engineering, Data Science, Api, Experience, Product, Risk, Compliance etc) to deliver innovative, AI-driven solutions aligned with business goals, while ensuring our data systems are secure, compliant, and highly performant.

Essential Functions

• Leads the design and optimization of scalable data pipelines and architecture to support GenAI use cases, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and adapter-based fine-tuning of LLMs using proprietary domain data.
• Builds and manages embedding workflows leveraging frontier LLMs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Mistral) and ensures efficient storage and semantic retrieval of vectorized content using vector databases such as FAISS, Weaviate, OpenSearch, Azure AI Search, or AWS Kendra.
• Develops ingestion and transformation workflows for unstructured content (e.g., PDFs, reports, emails), including chunking, semantic tagging, and metadata enrichment to power GenAI and semantic search applications.
• Partners with engineering, product, and data stakeholders to prototype and scale GenAI services, while establishing patterns and frameworks that lay the foundation for future ML and AI capabilities at CoBank.
• Defines and enforces data governance, quality, and compliance standards across GenAI pipelines for both structured and unstructured data, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements (e.g., CCPA, GDPR, EU AI Act) and industry frameworks such as ISO/IEC 400, NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF), and OECD AI Principles.
• Provides architectural leadership and technical mentorship, ensuring integration of GenAI systems into CoBank's analytics and EKS-based microservices platform, and aligning with existing CI/CD, GitOps and observability frameworks.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field. required
• Bachelor's degree may be substituted with four years of related experience (four years is in addition to what is minimally required for the role), or an equivalent combination of education and related experience.
• Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field. preferred

Work Experience

• 10 years of progressive experience in data engineering, with a strong foundation in building scalable, secure, and high-performance data pipelines, including both batch and real-time architectures. required
• 5 years of experience leading data architecture and engineering efforts in cloud environments (preferably AWS), with demonstrated expertise in tools such as Apache Spark, SQL, Python, Airflow, Kafka, and modern data lake/lakehouse architectures. required
• 3 years of hands-on experience with GenAI/ML infrastructure, including experience designing and building embedding pipelines, vector databases (e.g., FAISS, Weaviate, OpenSearch), and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures. required
• Prior Experience mentoring technical teams and guiding architectural decisions across cross-functional stakeholders in engineering, product, and risk/compliance functions. required
• Prior Experience processing and transforming unstructured data (e.g., PDFs, reports, knowledge bases) into AI-ready formats, including semantic chunking, metadata enrichment, and content classification. required
• Prior Experience working with or integrating hosted LLM services via AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, or similar platforms, as part of production-ready applications. required
• Proven track record in building and operationalizing data solutions that integrate with LLMs, including adapter-based fine-tuning techniques (e.g., LoRA, PEFT) and/or prompt engineering strategies to align model behavior with domain-specific use cases.
• Strong familiarity with CI/CD and GitOps workflows (e.g., GitHub Actions, ArgoCD), infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform), and Kubernetes-based deployments (especially EKS).

About CoBank

The typical base pay range for this role is between $174,500 - $235,637. Compensation may vary based on individual job-related knowledge, skills, expertise, and experience. This position is eligible for a discretionary annual incentive program driven by organization and individual performance.

The listed salary, other compensation and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. This job will be posted for a minimum of five (5) business days or until the position is filled. CoBank reserves the right to adjust compensation for all positions and to modify or discontinue benefits programs at any time in its sole discretion, subject to applicable law.

CoBank is a cooperative bank serving vital industries across rural America. The bank provides loans, leases, export financing and other financial services to agribusinesses and rural power, water and communications providers in all 50 states. The bank also provides wholesale loans and other financial services to affiliated Farm Credit associations serving more than 76,000 farmers, ranchers and other rural borrowers in 23 states around the country. CoBank is a member of the Farm Credit System, a nationwide network of banks and retail lending associations chartered to support the borrowing needs of U.S. agriculture, rural infrastructure and rural communities. Headquartered outside Denver, Colorado, CoBank serves customers from regional banking centers across the U.S. and also maintains an international representative office in Singapore.

REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

We are committed to ensuring that our online application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all applicants, including qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are an applicant with a disability, or are assisting an applicant with a disability, and require accessibility assistance or would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any aspect of the application process, including completing an application, interviewing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please submit a request by emailing recruiting@cobank.com. Include your contact information and specific details about your requested accommodation.

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time.

CoBank is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.