Data Engineer – AI/ML for Telecom Data Pipelines

About the role

The Data Engineer (AI/ML) designs, builds, and operates data pipelines, feature stores, and supporting infrastructure that enable AI and machine‑learning use cases across Zain Group’s telecom operations. Acting as a bridge between operating companies, the Group Data Center of Excellence, and AI delivery teams, the role ensures clean, high‑quality data is readily available for model training, inference, and analytics.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines that ingest BSS/OSS and other enterprise data for AI workloads.
• Create and manage feature stores, guaranteeing data quality, lineage, and governance.
• Coordinate data access with OpCo IT teams, Group Data CoE, and data‑governance functions.
• Assess data quality, completeness and fitness‑for‑purpose, and drive remediation actions.
• Implement AI‑specific data governance controls, including privacy, consent, retention and audit requirements.
• Support GenAI/RAG engineers by preparing data for vector databases and embedding pipelines.
• Design architectures for both real‑time and batch AI processing.
• Monitor pipeline health, performance and SLAs, and resolve issues proactively.
• Document data assets, schemas and lineage in the data catalog for discoverability.
• Collaborate with OpCo data engineers on data‑quality improvement and standardisation initiatives.

Required profile

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science or a related field.
• 5‑8 years of data‑engineering experience, with at least 2 years focused on AI/ML pipelines.
• Hands‑on experience with telecom BSS/OSS data is highly valuable.
• Strong understanding of data governance, privacy and compliance requirements.

Required skills

• Apache Spark
• Apache Airflow
• Apache Kafka
• Cloud data platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)
• SQL
• Python
• Feature‑store technologies
• Vector databases and embeddings