Digital Iron Logo Digital Iron
Digital Iron Logo

AI Backend Engineer - Data & Integration

💰 $120,000 - $200,000 🌍 Atlanta, Georgia; Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York; undefined, North Carolina; undefined, Montana; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Belfast, Northern Ireland 📅 04/20/2026

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Job Description

**About DIGITAL IRON**

At Digital Iron, we're building the intelligent infrastructure that powers
predictive maintenance and parts procurement automation across the heavy
equipment ecosystem. We work with customers to transform how industrial
equipment is maintained.

We're looking for an AI Infrastructure Engineer who combines deep technical
expertise in distributed systems with strategic thinking about integration
architecture. You'll need exceptionally high standards for data accuracy,
first-principles problem solving, and an obsession with building systems that
scale across diverse partnership models.

As our first dedicated infrastructure engineer, you'll work on problems at the
intersection of knowledge graphs, real-time IoT data, and enterprise
integration—building infrastructure that thousands of businesses will depend
on.

**What You 'll Own**

* Design the framework that supports multiple partnership and customer models: Deep Embedded (white-label components), Best-of-Breed SaaS (standalone platform with APIs), Data Layer Only (predictions via API)
* Evaluate architectural tradeoffs across complexity, risk, scalability, time-to-market, and value capture for each pattern
* Make build vs. buy decisions: direct API integrations vs. iPaaS middleware vs. embedded agents
* Define authentication strategies across OAuth 2.0, certificate-based auth, and federated identity for different customer security models
* Create deployment patterns that work across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments
* Design for portfolio risk

**What You 'll Do**

**Design Integration Architecture Build bi-directional integrations with
customer ERP systems** and telematics platforms. Architect event-driven
systems that turn predictive alerts into automated workflows. Implement
multiple integration patterns (Direct API, middleware/iPaaS, embedded agents,
webhooks) to support different partnership and customer models.

**Build Knowledge Graph Systems Transform** flat parts catalogs into semantic
networks using AWS Neptune. Design ontologies that capture ACES (fitment) and
PIES (attributes) standards for heavy equipment. Build ingestion pipelines
that parse customer data and extract compatibility relationships. Implement
graph traversal algorithms for multi-hop reasoning ("find compatible
substitute parts in stock").

**Develop Agentic Workflows Create AI agent orchestration** using tools like
Amazon Bedrock that breaks complex requests into multi-step workflows. Build
tool functions agents invoke: graph queries, customer API calls, inventory
checks, order placement. Implement GraphRAG systems that ground LLM responses
in structured graph data to prevent hallucination on critical fitment
recommendations.

**What We 're Looking For**

**Graph & Semantic Systems**

* Experience with graph databases (Neptune, Neo4j) and ontology design
* Ability to model complex domain relationships as graph structures
* Understanding of semantic query languages (Gremlin, SPARQL) and entity resolution

**Backend Engineering & Data Systems**

* Strong Python for data pipelines, graph operations, and application logic
* Experience with database design across relational and graph paradigms
* Background normalizing data from disparate sources with conflicting formats

**Enterprise Integration & API Design**

* Track record designing bidirectional API integrations with enterprise systems
* Experience with event-driven architectures, webhooks, and async workflows
* Knowledge of authentication models (OAuth 2.0, SAML, certificate-based)

**Data Engineering Excellence**

* Strong experience normalizing data from disparate sources with conflicting formats
* Obsession with accuracy where 99% is insufficient—compatibility data must be correct
* Experience building automated validation and conflict resolution systems
* Ability to model complex business domains (you'll learn heavy equipment specifics)

**Nice-to-Haves**

* Experience in automotive, heavy equipment, or industrial IoT domains
* Experience with embedded/white-label integration models or AI agent frameworks
* Knowledge of industry standards (ACES, PIES, OAGIS) or similar B2B data formats
* A network of sec-ops and ML compliance resources and colleagues to tap as we scale our team
* TypeScript for backend services and integration middleware
* Experience working with founders to evaluate integration architectures across different partnership strategies (deep embedded, best-of-breed SaaS, data layer only)

**This Role Is NOT For You If:**

* You prefer infrastructure automation over application architecture
* You're more comfortable with Kubernetes and Terraform than APIs and databases
* You need complete requirements before designing systems
* You view integration work as "plumbing" rather than strategic architecture

**Role Level**
Leadership & Team - You will have one staff-level engineering direct report
with dotted lines across a team of engineers. You will be expected to deliver
80% hands-on code development with 20% oversight across our vendors, strategy
and a direct report. We can be flexible on title for the right candidate.

**Role Details**
Location: US (East Coast & Mid-West only), South London & Belfast Office
Visa: Cannot sponsor at this time
Start: Immediate availability preferred

**Ready to Build Integration & Data Systems That Matters?**
If you're excited about designing backend systems at the intersection of graph
databases, enterprise integration, and AI agents—where your technical
decisions have direct business impact—we want to hear from you.