Contract AI Data Engineer

Contract AI Data Engineer

Chicago, IL

Information Technology - Information Technology /

Contract /

Hybrid

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About JSSI

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Chicago, Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI) is the largest independent provider of hourly cost maintenance programs for business aviation. JSSI delivers comprehensive coverage for engines, airframes, and auxiliary power units (APUs) across more than 300 different aircraft makes and models, helping owners and operators stabilize maintenance budgets, maximize aircraft availability, and protect asset value throughout the lifecycle of ownership. JSSI has built a portfolio of complementary business lines designed to simplify the economic and technical complexity of business aviation; these include Maintenance teams, Traxxall maintenance tracking software, Parts & Engines, Conklin aircraft cost and performance data, and Aviation Capital asset-based financing solutions. Together, these offerings support owners, operators, and maintenance providers with integrated tools spanning ownership and maintenance planning, execution, and financial management. With more than 6,500 aircraft supported through programs and software platforms, JSSI leverages its unique independence, unmatched scale, and data-driven insight to deliver customized solutions and support models aligned to the interests of each client - regardless of aircraft platform. JSSI is backed by leading institutional investors GTCR, Genstar Capital, and Blackstone. Learn more at jetsupport.com.

JSSI is building an AI-first data platform, and the AI Data Engineer is the person who builds and owns it. You are the platform owner - responsible for the pipelines, the lakehouse, and the governed datasets that make AI and analytics possible across every JSSI business unit.

This is a hands-on, individual contributor role. You will design and build the data infrastructure that AI agents depend on, ensure data quality and governance are production-grade, and work at the intersection of data engineering and AI delivery. You will use Claude Code to build pipelines against JSSI standards and be a core part of how the organization accelerates.

Responsibilities

Own the data platform

• Own Bronze / Silver / Gold pipelines in Microsoft Fabric and OneLake
• Model governed semantic layers; serve Power BI via Direct Lake
• Ingest business-unit data into Fabric & Azure SQL with quality and lineage controls
• Enforce data governance, security, and PII handling aligned to Entra ID
• Expose curated datasets to AI agents through approved MCP servers only
• Use Claude Code to build pipelines against JSSI standards; review and validate all AI-generated code before it ships
• Orchestrate, monitor, and optimize pipelines for reliability, performance, and Fabric capacity (CU) cost
• Manage Git-based version control and Fabric deployment pipelines across dev / test / prod

Support reporting and ad-hoc requests

• Handle ad-hoc requests (report enhancements and fixes, and dataset enhancements and fixes) across Microsoft Fabric and Power BI
• Build and maintain paginated (operational) reports
• Write, debug, and tune SQL for reporting, data investigation, and fixes
• Use Claude Code to investigate and diagnose platform, data-quality, and reporting issues, tracing root cause across pipelines, lake house tables, and semantic models before drafting a validated fix
• Support and optimize Power BI semantic models and DAX for downstream consumers

Requirements

Required

• Hands-on experience building and maintaining data pipelines in Microsoft Fabric, including Lakehouse architecture and OneLake
• Proficiency with Bronze / Silver / Gold medallion architecture and semantic layer modeling
• Experience with Azure SQL, ADLS Gen2, and data ingestion across multiple source systems
• Understanding of data governance, security, and PII handling practices, including Entra ID alignment
• Experience exposing data products via APIs or MCP-style interfaces for downstream AI or analytics consumption
• Active use of AI coding tools (such as Claude Code) as part of your development workflow - not aspirational, but current practice

Strongly preferred

• Experience building data infrastructure specifically to support AI agents, ML models, or agentic pipelines
• Familiarity with Power BI and Direct Lake connectivity
• Experience working within engineering standards, documentation-first workflows, and structured code review practices
• Exposure to MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers or similar AI data access patterns

Not required

• People management experience - this is an individual contributor role
• Aviation or MRO domain knowledge - curiosity and the ability to learn the business context matters more than knowing it on day one

WHO THRIVES IN THIS ROLE

This role is a great fit for someone who takes genuine ownership of data infrastructure - not just someone who builds pipelines when tickets arrive, but someone who thinks about the platform as a product with real consumers. You are already using AI tools to write and ship code faster. You care about data quality as a first principle, not a nice-to-have. And you want to be part of building something that directly enables the AI-first future of a company, not supporting a legacy stack.

JSSI is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other characteristic protected by law.

JSSI does not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third-party recruiting agencies in response to job postings. No fee will be paid to third parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to our hiring managers or Recruiting Team.

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