Senior AI & Data Engineer

Senior AI & Data Engineer

Chennai, India

About Banyan

Banyan Software is the best permanent home for software businesses that serve specialized industries, their employees, and their customers. We are on a mission to acquire, build, and grow great companies worldwide, helping them modernize through shared AI expertise and operational discipline. The Banyan Software Foundation, endowed with $100 million in Banyan stock, leverages technology to build a greener and more equitable world. Banyan is Great Place to Work Certified, a five-time Inc. 5000 honoree, and a top 10 company on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Atlanta, Banyan operates more than 100 portfolio companies across North America, the UK, EU, and APAC.

Overview

We are seeking a Senior AI & Data Engineer to join our Tech & Data Strategy team in Chennai. You excel in your understanding of AI: how large language models work, how AI agents reason and use tools, and how AI automation transforms enterprise processes. Tools like Python, n8n, and Claude Code are simply how you bring that understanding to life. You stay genuinely curious about a field that changes every month, and you are equally strong on the data side: you understand how data is stored, modeled, and moved across databases, data lakes, and warehouses, and how it ultimately reaches decision-makers through modern reporting.

You will design and deploy AI-powered workflows and data solutions: building intelligent agents and automations, integrating frontier models and APIs (including via the Model Context Protocol), connecting data across our enterprise systems, and shaping how AI fits within our modern reporting architecture. You will build the way we build: using agentic coding tools like Claude Code to accelerate development, prototype rapidly, and ship production-quality solutions. Working closely with our onshore team in Canada and the US, you will become an analytical change agent with broad exposure to our business as you help identify and roll out AI-driven automations and insights that accelerate processes across M&A and Business Development. If you are driven by data, thrive on solving problems, and are excited by a startup-like environment that values innovation, we invite you to join us in Chennai.

Key Responsibilities

Agentic AI Design & Implementation: Architect, develop, and deploy AI agents and LLM-powered solutions for our BD and M&A teams using frontier models (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini), including context engineering, tool use, structured outputs, and integration with enterprise systems.

Data Architecture & Reporting: Work across our data landscape (databases, data lakes, and warehouses such as Snowflake) to ensure clean, well-modeled, and accessible data. Bring AI into our modern reporting architecture, enhancing Tableau dashboards and analytics workflows with AI-driven insights, natural language querying, and automated data preparation.

Automation & Integration Workflows: Design, build, and maintain workflow automations using n8n and agent frameworks to connect AI models, MCP servers, APIs, and enterprise systems (e.g., Salesforce, Snowflake, Google Workspace, Slack). Optimize process automation and ensure reliability, scalability, and error handling across integrations.

Evaluation, Optimization & Governance: Build evals to measure quality, accuracy, and cost. Continuously monitor performance, implement guardrails, and ensure AI systems remain accurate, compliant, and efficient in production.

AI Application Development: Analyze data and develop bespoke AI applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and data enrichment services, that enhance decision-making and automate complex business processes.

Hands-on Software Development: Make significant code contributions, accelerated by agentic coding tools like Claude Code: setting up architectural scaffolding, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code, and solving complex, blocking integration challenges for the team.

Collaboration: Partner effectively with cross-functional teams, champion responsible AI adoption across the business, and contribute to a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

Required Qualifications & Experience

Deep AI Understanding: Excellent grasp of how LLMs, AI agents, and AI automation work: model capabilities and limitations, agentic reasoning and tool use, and where AI creates genuine business value. This understanding matters more to us than any single tool.

Applied LLM & Agentic Experience: Practical experience using language models for tasks such as summarization, information extraction, classification, and data enrichment, and connecting those capabilities to real-world business applications through API integrations, webhooks, and error-handling logic. Demonstrated ability to deploy frontier models (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) into production. We use n8n and Python as our primary tools, but what matters is your ability to leverage whichever tools the problem calls for.

Data Foundations: Strong understanding of modern data architecture: relational databases, data lakes, and cloud warehouses (e.g., Snowflake), including data modeling, pipelines, and SQL. Comfortable working with APIs and whatever data tools the job requires.

Reporting & Analytics: Experience with modern reporting and BI, ideally Tableau, and an informed view of how AI fits within today's reporting architecture: AI-assisted analysis, natural language interfaces to data, and automated insight generation.

Context Engineering & Evaluation: Creative and analytical approach to crafting, testing, and refining prompts and context strategies. Ability to systematically evaluate AI outputs and iterate to improve quality, accuracy, and performance.

AI-Native Development: Fluency with agentic coding tools, especially Claude Code (Cursor and GitHub Copilot also count), as a core part of how you build: delegating well-scoped tasks to coding agents, reviewing their output critically, and multiplying your own productivity.

Architectural Understanding: Solid understanding of modern architectural patterns (microservices, serverless, event-driven architecture) and the principles of Domain-Driven Design (DDD).

Domain Knowledge: Understanding of financial data, company performance, and research processes to support AI-driven initiatives across M&A and BD workflows.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills: Exceptional communication, presentation, and listening skills. Ability to articulate complex technical issues and solutions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders effectively, along with clear written documentation.

Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field preferred.

Preferred Skills (A Plus)

Multi-Agent Frameworks: Experience with agent frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, crewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK) for sophisticated AI workflow orchestration.

MCP Development: Experience developing or connecting to Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and tools.

Advanced Claude Code Usage: Experience extending Claude Code with custom skills, MCP servers, and hooks, or running it headless within CI/CD pipelines and automated workflows.

RAG & Vector Databases: Familiarity with vector databases, hybrid search, and RAG or GraphRAG architectures.

Enterprise Data Platforms: Hands-on experience with Salesforce and Snowflake data models and APIs.

AI-Enabled Analytics: Experience embedding AI into BI environments, such as Tableau AI capabilities, semantic layers, or natural language querying over governed data.

AI Safety & Guardrails: Experience with guardrail design, eval frameworks, and observability tooling for enterprise AI.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Equal Employment Opportunity at Banyan

Banyan affirms that inequality is detrimental to our Global Teams, associates, our Operating Companies, and the communities we serve. As a collective, our goal is to impact lasting change through our actions. Together, we unite for equality and equity. Banyan is committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of any protected characteristic, including race, color, genetic information, creed, national origin, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, lawful alien status, ancestry, age, marital status, or protected veteran status and will not discriminate against anyone on the basis of a disability. We support an inclusive workplace where associates excel based on personal merit, qualifications, experience, ability, and job performance.