Senior Data Engineer

Who are we? Humanforce’s vision is to make work easier and life better for frontline and flexible workforces. Humanforce provides the market leading, best-in-one human capital management (HCM) suite for frontline and flexible workforces - without compromise. Our employee centred, intelligent and compliant HCM suite is highly integrated and composable, and consists of Workforce Management (WFM), HR, Talent, Payroll, and Wellbeing. Humanforce has built strong foundations since its founding in 2002. We help over 2300 customers and almost 1 million employees under management in 30+ countries, across a wide range of industries, including aged, child and health care; education; hospitality; retail; local government and more. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, North America and the Philippines. Customers choose Humanforce because we enable them to deliver an exceptional employee experience, build a compelling employee value proposition, and connect the flow of the world’s talent with the growth, productivity and efficiency objectives of frontline and flexible workforces. Who you are We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to join our Automation & AI team and help build the next generation of intelligent products, platforms, and internal capabilities. You will focus on knowledge management services, AI-enabled capabilities, retrieval systems, and the pipelines that support them. You will join a team working at the intersection of software engineering, automation, data, and applied AI. The work will involve both established engineering practices and emerging technologies, providing the opportunity to influence how intelligent capabilities are designed, delivered, governed, and scaled. You will have the opportunity to contribute across customer-facing products, internal platforms, knowledge systems, workflow automation, and foundational data services while helping shape the team’s technical direction and engineering practices. This role is suited to an engineer who enjoys working across system boundaries, is comfortable navigating emerging and ambiguous technical domains, and can turn experiments into secure, reliable, and maintainable production capabilities. What you will do Integrating large language models or generative AI services into software applications.Retrieval-augmented generation, semantic search, embeddings, chunking, metadata design, and document indexing.Prompt design, structured model outputs, tool calling, and model failure handling.Agentic systems involving planning, tool execution, memory, orchestration, and human oversight.Workflow engines, rules systems, business process automation, or orchestration platforms.Processing and retrieving structured and unstructured information.Data pipelines, batch processing, streaming, and event-driven processing.AI and retrieval evaluation, including test datasets, quality measures, regression testing, and production monitoring.AI security and responsible AI considerations, including prompt injection, sensitive data exposure, access control, auditability, and appropriate human review. What you’ll need Strong TypeScript, Node.js, Python, or equivalent backend engineering experience; TypeScript and Node.js should remain primary where alignment with the wider platform is importantExperience developing services that ingest, transform, index, and retrieve structured and unstructured informationStrong understanding of data pipelines, batch processing, event-driven processing, and data quality controlsExperience working with PostgreSQL and data modelling for operational and analytical use casesPractical experience integrating large language models into production applicationsUnderstanding of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, semantic search, chunking, metadata design, and document indexingExperience evaluating AI system quality using measurable criteria rather than relying solely on manual testingUnderstanding of prompt design, structured outputs, tool use, model limitations, and failure handlingExperience implementing access controls, privacy protections, auditability, and data governance within AI or knowledge systemsStrong understanding of data lineage, observability, validation, and error recoveryAbility to evaluate emerging AI technologies and determine where they provide genuine product or operational value Some ‘nice to haves’ Experience with vector search technologies or PostgreSQL vector extensionsExperience with document processing, entity extraction, classification, or knowledge graphsFamiliarity with agentic architectures, planning, memory, tool execution, and workflow orchestrationExperience with model evaluation frameworks, test datasets, hallucination detection, and regression testingExperience with streaming platforms, data warehouses, transformation frameworks, or data orchestration toolsFamiliarity with machine learning operations, model gateways, model monitoring, and cost optimisation Our values We are bold We are all in We are customer obsessed We do what we say We are good humans Our approach to flexibility We are passionate about people making their own decisions about where and when they work. Our hybrid model of minimum two days a week of in office moments supports flexibility tailored to individual and team needs, empowering people to achieve their career and personal goals. Benefits A truly flexible workplace through our Flex@HF approachThe opportunity to be part of a fast-growing global tech companyA focus on learning and development through Humanforce HRA generous talent referral program – know great people, be rewarded12 weeks paid parental leave for primary carers, 4 weeks’ for secondary4 extra days leave to focus on your wellbeingContemporary and practical Employee Assistance ProgramA cool reward and recognition program – shout to your colleagues and earn points to spendAccess to our own financial wellbeing platform Thrive – including earned wage access, tools to budget and save, perks and cashback across 100s of Australian retailersFun, collaborative culture with passionate peopleA workplace where you can genuinely improve the world of work! We are a diverse and dispersed organisation and are actively looking to grow our team with individuals from all diverse backgrounds. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, cultures, ages, genders, neurodiversity, religions, sexual orientations, and experiences to apply.