Staff AI Engineer, Data & Intelligence at Acquia

Role overview

Acquia builds a Drupal-based digital experience platform for enterprise customers. Its Data & Intelligence function uses operational, product and customer data to build retrieval, graph, inference and agentic systems.

This is a hands-on Staff AI Engineer role working across observability, the core data platform and shared intelligence capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Ship production AI code and lead retrieval, indexing and knowledge-graph work so agents can resolve customers and retrieve context quickly.
• Build inference and signal layers over an Iceberg-based lakehouse, write scored inferences back and expose contracts for other teams.
• Turn signals such as churn risk, entitlement mismatch and expansion opportunity into workflows with human review where appropriate.
• Choose between large models, smaller fine-tuned models and deterministic code while managing inference cost.
• Own evaluation, tracing and observability so AI signals are reliable before action is taken.
• Set engineering patterns for other teams and translate company goals into shipped systems.

Qualifications

• Eight or more years of software engineering, including at least three years shipping AI or ML systems to production.
• Strong programming fundamentals and deep proficiency in a language used for AI and data work; Python is Acquia’s primary ML language.
• Advanced SQL, dbt or an equivalent transformation layer, and distributed query experience over lakehouse or warehouse storage.
• Production retrieval and context engineering with embeddings, vector or hybrid search, graph retrieval and entity modelling.
• Agentic systems and durable workflows with tool calling, state, memory and human-in-the-loop patterns; Acquia names Temporal and LangGraph.
• Cloud deployment with containerized services, preferably AWS, plus AI evaluation, observability and inference-cost ownership.

Technology in this role

• Python: Python is Acquia’s primary ML .
• AWS: Cloud deployment with containerized services, preferably AWS, plus AI evaluation, observability and inference-cost .
• SQL: Advanced SQL, dbt or an equivalent transformation layer, and distributed query experience over lakehouse or warehouse .
• C: • Strong communication skills — able to present AI system design to both engineers and C-suite .
• dbt: Advanced SQL, dbt or an equivalent transformation layer, and distributed query experience over lakehouse or warehouse .
• CAN: Ship production AI code and lead retrieval, indexing and knowledge-graph work so agents can resolve customers and retrieve context .

Role-specific candidate guide

Preparation notes based on the employer’s stated responsibilities and qualifications.

Understanding the scope. This Staff AI Engineer (Data & Intelligence function) position at Acquia is best assessed through the work described in the employer’s posting, rather than the title alone. The available role overview says: “Acquia builds a Drupal-based digital experience platform for enterprise customers. Its Data & Intelligence function uses operational, product and customer data to build retrieval, graph, inference and agentic systems.” Read that statement together with the responsibilities below to understand the likely balance between delivery, coordination and technical decision-making. The role belongs to the AI and data area, but that label is only a guide to the work; the employer’s own requirements remain decisive. Before applying, check the original listing for reporting lines, product or team assignment, employment terms and any details that may have changed since this copy was checked. Where this page says a fact is not specified, treat it as an open question rather than an implied promise.

What the responsibilities signal. The posting specifically names “Ship production AI code and lead retrieval, indexing and knowledge-graph work so agents can resolve customers and retrieve context quickly.”; “Build inference and signal layers over an Iceberg-based lakehouse, write scored inferences back and expose contracts for other teams.”; “Turn signals such as churn risk, entitlement mismatch and expansion opportunity into workflows with human review where appropriate.”. For each duty, identify a project where you performed comparable work and be ready to describe the context, your own contribution, constraints, decisions, and measurable result. Explain how you moved from the initial need to implementation, review, release or operational follow-through, where those stages apply. If the work involved other teams or users, distinguish your decisions from the group’s contribution. Avoid presenting a technology keyword as proof by itself: connect it to the problem you solved, the scale or complexity involved, and what changed after your work. The source may contain additional duties; review it directly before preparing your application.

How to read the requirements. The listed qualifications include “Eight or more years of software engineering, including at least three years shipping AI or ML systems to production.”; “Strong programming fundamentals and deep proficiency in a language used for AI and data work; Python is Acquia’s primary ML language.”; “Advanced SQL, dbt or an equivalent transformation layer, and distributed query experience over lakehouse or warehouse storage.”. Mark each requirement as demonstrated, adjacent experience or a genuine gap, then use a concise example for the first two categories. A strong example explains what you personally owned, how you made trade-offs, how you validated the result and what you learned. If the posting specifies years.

Benefits

• Competitive healthcare coverage, wellness programmes and flexible time off.
• Parental leave, recognition programmes and support for employee and family wellbeing.
• A learning-oriented environment using AI tools and shared engineering capabilities.

About Acquia

Acquia provides an open-source Drupal-based digital experience platform for content, digital assets and product information.

Browse job categories

Related jobs

• Java Product Support Engineer at Sonatype — Sonatype
• Senior Java Product Support Engineer at Sonatype — Sonatype
• Senior DevOps Engineer, Streaming Data at Grab — Grab
• Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Kake — Kake
• Principal Software Engineer, Agentic Data Platform at Horizon3 — Horizon3
• Senior Data Scientist, Product Growth at Temporal — Temporal