AI Data Engineer

Forge - Newton, MA

www.forgeco.com

About Us

Forge (forgoco.com) is a newly formed startup based in Boston, MA. We are a technology-enabled trades company with mobile, web, AI, and smart-glasses software applications that enable our professionals in the field and create amazing experiences for our customers. We are innovating rapidly within the professional home services industry – an industry that has barely changed in the last 100 years. Why? Because hiring tradespeople or contractors to do even simple tasks is a frustrating and time-consuming process for customers. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the shortage of skilled tradespeople in the U.S. — the result of long-term trends that have pushed entry-level workers away from the trades.

At Forge, we are focused on building the next generation of trades professionals and the software that will help make them successful. We believe more skilled workers, enabled by modern technology, will power a wholly new (and vastly improved) customer experience for all.

About Your Role

Forge is growing rapidly and we’re looking for a data-focused AI Engineer to join our team! This person will support our newly-formed AI Technologies Team building out solutions that will power our Pros in the field. You will help determine our data collection & engineering best practices to support our AI applications. You will work closely with our product managers, test engineers, and other technical leaders as we move at a rapid pace.

Responsibilities:

• Strategize an overall data collection process (including labeling, annotations, etc.) for our overall AI efforts;
• Work with different cross-functional teams to devise and deploy data collection approaches, as well as to discover opportunities for enabling AI / Computer Vision;
• Develop, construct, test, and maintain schema designs, protocols, and data architectures necessary for the creation of data, image and video libraries to support ML/AI projects;
• Enable scalable, reliable, and secure data processing systems (e.g., data lakes and workflows) for both model training and production;
• Participate in deploying and validating ML models and monitor their performance;
• Collect, clean, preprocess, and analyze large datasets to develop valuable insights and identify potential AI use cases;
• Contribute to the development of patents, copyrights, or other forms of intellectual property protection for AI innovations;
• Grow with the team as we learn and apply new technologies that are evolving rapidly;
• Actively engage with our scrum process;
• Work with product managers and designers to flesh out technical specifications and requirements;
• Document and communicate database design, data flow and data dependencies;
• Work closely with other departments: Pro team, Operations, Customer Service, etc;
• Stay up to date on new advancements in the field of data & AI, participating in ongoing education, workshops, and conferences to maintain expertise and incorporate new developments into ongoing projects.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience building solutions in the data engineering field;
• Experience working with a variety of standard database technologies (e.g. DynamoDB, mySQL, Mongo, Oracle, PostgreSQL), generally comfort working with end-to-end data pipelines and streaming data;
• Experience building machine learning data stacks (e.g., databricks, airflow, dbt);
• Great communication skills. You must be able to communicate technical information to other software engineers, our testing team, and our product managers;
• Good team player; ability to work closely with an experienced software team and collaborate effectively;
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a Computer Science-related field is desirable, but not a hard requirement. Must show very deep math & data-management skills;
• You should be a quick learner who is comfortable working in a highly agile startup environment where rapid change is a constant;
• Ability to get work done and meet deadlines with minimal direct supervision;
• Empathy and appreciation for the Trades.

Added Bonus:

• Machine Learning/data engineering research or academic background;
• Experience using Python to build software in the ML space;
• Development background working with Node.js, preferably in a microservices environment;
• Experience with reinforcement learning algorithms (e.g., Q-learning, Deep Q-Networks);
• Familiarity with big data technologies (e.g., Hadoop, Spark);
• Experience working with R, C++;
• Agile development experience, or experience setting up Agile processes;
• Working experience in the Trades.

At Forge, we value innovation, teamwork, and a commitment to excellence. We're dedicated to creating a supportive and collaborative environment where individuals can grow professionally and make a real impact. We offer competitive salaries, equity, benefits, flexible working arrangements, and a dynamic culture of intelligent, hard-working, and creative individuals.