Associate Data Engineer, Enterprise Data Engineering

Associate Data Engineer, Enterprise Data Engineering

Description

At the World Bank, a member of the World Bank Group (WBG), you’ll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world’s most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit https://www.worldbank.org/en/who-we-are/ibrd

ITS Vice Presidency Context

The Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) enables the World Bank Group to achieve its mission of ending extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet by delivering transformative information and technologies to its staff working in over 150+ locations. For more information on ITS, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=VTFGffa1Y7w

Unit Context:    

The ITS Data Office (ITSDO) is the central entity within the World Bank Group’s Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) department responsible for enabling data, AI, information, and knowledge capabilities across the institution. It comprises four Units focused on platforms & tools, product & service delivery, enablement and governance. The office plays a pivotal role in advancing the Bank’s digital transformation, supporting business domains with trusted data, information and AI capabilities, and fostering a culture of responsible innovation.  

The Platforms & Tools Unit is responsible for building, integrating, and continuously modernizing the foundational technology infrastructure that powers data, AI, archives, and knowledge services across the World Bank Group. The unit leads the rationalization and simplification of legacy systems, and modernization towards platforms that are scalable, secure, interoperable, and designed for self-service and adoption. The unit plays a critical role in enabling enterprise-wide transformation by delivering data environments, digitization infrastructure, and open knowledge repositories that are AI-ready and aligned with business needs.   

Duties and accountabilities: 

RAG & Unstructured Data Pipelines

• Design and build scalable ingestion and processing pipelines for unstructured content including PDFs, audio, video, and images.
• Implement document processing workflows covering OCR, metadata extraction, content enrichment, chunking strategies, and vector indexing to support RAG solutions.
• Develop multimodal processing capabilities that handle diverse source formats consistently and at scale.
• Build and maintain embedding, retrieval, and re-ranking pipelines integrated with enterprise search and AI platforms.
  
  Reusable Patterns & Accelerators
  
  
• Develop a library of reusable pipeline templates, blueprints, and starter kits for common unstructured data processing use cases.
• Build Infrastructure as Code (IaC) patterns and standardized deployment configurations that domain teams can adopt independently.
• Document reference architectures, cookbooks, and implementation guides to reduce time-to-value across teams.
  
  Collaboration
  
  
• Partner with data architects, AI engineers, and business teams to translate requirements into reliable data products.
• Contribute to code reviews, engineering standards, and shared documentation practices.
  

Selection Criteria

Required Skills & Experience

• Demonstrated experience leading engineers or technical teams in a hands-on capacity, able to set direction, unblock teams, and contribute directly to delivery.
• Proven ability to design end-to-end data and AI architectures and communicate them clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience managing or co-leading vendor relationships, including evaluation, onboarding, and ongoing delivery oversight.
• Track record of translating strategic or business-level requirements into concrete technical designs and phased delivery plans.
• Proven experience in data engineering with a focus on unstructured data processing and AI/search use cases.
• Hands-on expertise with Databricks, Google Cloud Platform, and BigQuery.
• Experience building RAG or enterprise search pipelines including chunking, embedding, and indexing workflows.
• Familiarity with multimodal content processing (PDF, audio, video) and associated tooling.
• Understanding of DevOps practices: CI/CD, automated testing, and pipeline monitoring.
  
  Nice to Have
  
  
• Experience with Vertex AI for embedding generation and model serving.
• Familiarity with graph databases or knowledge graph concepts.
• Exposure to federated data architecture or data mesh principles.
• Experience in Agile/SAFe delivery environments
  
  Educational Qualifications and Experience:
• Typically requires a Master's degree with 5 years of experience or a Bachelors Degree with a minimum of 7 years of relevant experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 5-10 years of experience in data platform operations, cloud operations, SRE, DevOps, DataOps, production support, or platform engineering disciplines.
  
  Certification Requirements:  
• SAFe or other relevant Agile certifications.
• Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate or equivalent
  
  WBG Culture Attributes:
  
  1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
  
  2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
  
  3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

WBG Culture Attributes:

1. Sense of urgency: Anticipate and quickly respond to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.
2. Thoughtful risk-taking: Challenge the status quo and push boundaries to achieve greater impact.
3. Empowerment and accountability: Empower yourself and others to act and hold each other accountable for results.

World Bank Group Core Competencies

The World Bank Group offers comprehensive benefits, including a retirement plan; medical, life and disability insurance; and paid leave, including parental leave, as well as reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity and inclusive employer with a dedicated and committed workforce, and do not discriminate based on gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.

Learn more about working at the World Bank and IFC including our values and inspiring stories.