Associate Data Engineer (Python / AI Insurance SaaS)

$100K - $125K New York, NY, US Entry Level Data Engineer

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Skills & Technologies

Python

About This Role

AI job market dashboard showing open roles by category

About Us: EvolutionIQ's mission is to deliver state of the art technology that helps insurance claims teams make claims handling more accurate, fair, and efficient, so that more people impacted by injury or illness can continue their lives with dignity and stability. We are currently experiencing massive growth and to accomplish our goals, we are hiring world-class talent who want to help build and scale internally, and transform the insurance space. Our team is our #1 priority, and we have been named one of Inc.'s Best Workplaces 3 years in a row and Built In's Best Places to work in 2025 and 2026!

About You: An ambitious Associate Data Engineer who wants to jumpstart their career by diving into the core of our technical operations. You have a passion for problem-solving, data analytics, and ensuring customer requests are handled seamlessly from start to finish. You are excited to take on hands-on ticket work, collaborating closely with our Solutions Engineering team to uncover insights and drive cross-functional initiatives. You love investigating issues, analyzing data, and learning how to reduce friction in the engineering and client experience.

In this Role You Will:

  • Take ownership of incoming technical tickets, investigating issues, and driving them to resolution to ensure a seamless customer experience.
  • Collaborate daily with Solutions Engineers to run analytics, extract data insights, and support strategic client deliverables.
  • Act as a technical liaison providing cross-functional support between Technical Support, Product Management, and Engineering to ensure requests flow smoothly through their lifecycle.
  • Help measure and track SLAs (e.g., 1 business day for triage, 5 business days for review) and proactively unblock stalled requests.
  • Assist in identifying trends from ticket data to inform product improvements and engineering priorities.
  • Learn and grow within the engineering space, collaborating directly with cross-functional teams like DevOps and Client Strategy and Analytics.

Requirements:

  • 0-2 years of experience in software engineering, technical support, IT operations, data analytics, or a similar technical role (recent graduates with strong internship experience are welcome).
  • Basic proficiency in Python and SQL (or similar querying/scripting languages) to support data analytics and technical investigations.
  • Familiarity with standard issue-tracking platforms and support workflows.
  • Conceptual understanding of the software development life cycle, Agile planning, and client support best practices.
  • High attention to detail and a data-driven mindset to parse through logs, metrics, and customer reports.
  • You have crisp written and verbal communication skills and the ability to effectively translate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders (like Client Services and customers).
  • Excellent collaboration skills and a team-player attitude, open to giving and receiving critical feedback across teams.

Work-life, Culture & Perks:

  • Compensation: The base salary range is $100-125K, with flexibility depending on a candidate's background and experience. Plus annual bonus plan
  • Well-Being: Medical, dental, vision, short & long-term disability, life insurance and AD&D, and 401k matching. Additional family, wellness, and pet benefits.
  • Home & Family: Paid time off and sick leave, 100% paid parental leave (16 weeks for primary caregivers and 12 weeks for secondary caregivers). We offer a flexible schedule for new parents returning to work.
  • Office Life: Catered lunches, happy hours, pet-friendly spaces, and monthly technology stipend.
  • Growth & Training: $1,000/year for each employee for professional development, as well opportunities for tuition reimbursement.

EvolutionIQ appreciates your interest in our company as a place of employment. EvolutionIQ is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Salary Context

This $100K-$125K range is below the median for Data Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $150K across 25 roles with salary data).

Role Details

Company EvolutionIQ
Title Associate Data Engineer (Python / AI Insurance SaaS)
Location New York, NY, US
Category Data Engineer
Experience Entry Level
Salary $100K - $125K
Remote No

About This Role

Data Engineers build the pipelines that feed AI models. They design ETL workflows, manage data lakes, and ensure training and inference data is clean, timely, and accessible. Without good data engineering, AI projects fail. It's that simple.

The AI era has expanded the data engineer's scope far beyond batch ETL jobs. You're building real-time embedding pipelines for RAG systems, managing vector databases, ensuring training data quality at scale, and building the infrastructure that lets ML teams iterate on data as fast as they iterate on models. Data quality is the biggest predictor of model quality, and you're the person responsible for it.

Across the 8,943 AI roles we're tracking, Data Engineer positions make up 1% of the market. At EvolutionIQ, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.

Data Engineer demand in AI contexts is strong and growing. Every company building AI needs clean, reliable data pipelines. The shift toward real-time AI applications (chatbots, recommendation engines, agent systems) means data engineering is more critical than ever. Companies are willing to pay premium salaries for data engineers with AI/ML pipeline experience.

What the Work Looks Like

A typical week includes: debugging a data pipeline that's producing stale embeddings for the RAG system, optimizing a Spark job that processes training data, building a data quality monitoring dashboard, meeting with the ML team to understand their next data requirements, and writing dbt models that transform raw event data into ML-ready features. The work is deeply technical and high-impact.

Data Engineer demand in AI contexts is strong and growing. Every company building AI needs clean, reliable data pipelines. The shift toward real-time AI applications (chatbots, recommendation engines, agent systems) means data engineering is more critical than ever. Companies are willing to pay premium salaries for data engineers with AI/ML pipeline experience.

Skills Required

Python (16% of roles)

SQL, Python, and distributed systems (Spark, Airflow, dbt) are core. Cloud data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) are increasingly standard. Many AI-focused roles also want familiarity with vector databases and embedding pipelines. Understanding data modeling, pipeline orchestration, and data quality frameworks covers the essentials.

AI-specific data engineering skills include: building feature stores, managing training data versioning, implementing data lineage tracking, and building real-time embedding pipelines. Experience with streaming systems (Kafka, Flink) is valuable for real-time AI applications. Understanding ML data requirements (balanced datasets, data augmentation, evaluation set construction) makes you much more effective working with ML teams.

Strong postings specify the data stack, mention ML pipeline work, and describe the scale of data you'll be working with. Look for companies that understand the connection between data quality and model quality. Avoid roles that conflate data engineering with data analysis.

Compensation Benchmarks

Data Engineer roles pay a median of $177,825 based on 160 positions with disclosed compensation. Entry-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $110,408. This role's midpoint ($112K) sits 37% below the category median. Disclosed range: $100K to $125K.

Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($253,100) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $110,408; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $228,700; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,000.

EvolutionIQ AI Hiring

EvolutionIQ has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across Data Engineer. Based in New York, NY, US. Compensation range: $125K - $125K.

Location Context

AI roles in New York pay a median of $221,000 across 2,878 tracked positions. That's 4% above the national median.

Career Path

Common paths into Data Engineer roles include Backend Engineer, Database Administrator, Analytics Engineer.

From here, career progression typically leads toward Senior Data Engineer, ML Engineer, Data Platform Lead.

Master SQL and Python first. Then learn a distributed processing framework (Spark or its modern alternatives) and a pipeline orchestrator (Airflow, Dagster, Prefect). Build a portfolio project that demonstrates end-to-end pipeline construction: ingest, transform, validate, serve. If you want to specialize in AI data engineering, add vector databases and embedding pipelines to your skill set.

What to Expect in Interviews

Expect SQL deep-dives (query optimization, partitioning strategies, data modeling), Python coding focused on data pipeline patterns, and system design questions about building scalable ETL workflows. Companies with ML teams will ask about feature stores, embedding pipelines, and training data management. Be ready to discuss data quality monitoring, pipeline orchestration, and how you'd handle schema evolution in a production data lake.

When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings specify the data stack, mention ML pipeline work, and describe the scale of data you'll be working with. Look for companies that understand the connection between data quality and model quality. Avoid roles that conflate data engineering with data analysis.

AI Hiring Overview

The AI job market has 8,943 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 175 entry-level, 4,132 mid-level, 3,268 senior, and 1,368 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (521 positions). The remaining 8,351 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.

The market median for AI roles is $213,380. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,148. The 90th percentile reaches $319,310. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($253,100 median, 57 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 419 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 51 roles).

Data Engineer demand in AI contexts is strong and growing. Every company building AI needs clean, reliable data pipelines. The shift toward real-time AI applications (chatbots, recommendation engines, agent systems) means data engineering is more critical than ever. Companies are willing to pay premium salaries for data engineers with AI/ML pipeline experience.

The AI Job Market Today

The AI job market spans 8,943 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,739), AI Product Manager (403), AI Software Engineer (402). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.

The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (175) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,132) and senior (3,268) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,368 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.

Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (521 positions), with 8,351 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.

AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,380. Top-quartile roles start at $264,148, and the 90th percentile reaches $319,310. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.

Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $253,100 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.

The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,422 postings), Aws (808 postings), Azure (638 postings), Rag (555 postings), Gcp (457 postings), Pytorch (433 postings), Claude (341 postings), Kubernetes (337 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Based on 160 roles with disclosed compensation, the median salary for Data Engineer positions is $177,825. Actual compensation varies by seniority, location, and company stage.
SQL, Python, and distributed systems (Spark, Airflow, dbt) are core. Cloud data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) are increasingly standard. Many AI-focused roles also want familiarity with vector databases and embedding pipelines. Understanding data modeling, pipeline orchestration, and data quality frameworks covers the essentials.
About 6% of the 8,943 AI roles we track offer remote work. Remote availability varies by company and seniority level, with senior and leadership roles more likely to offer location flexibility.
EvolutionIQ is among the companies actively hiring for AI and ML talent. Check our company profiles for detailed breakdowns of open roles, salary ranges, and hiring trends.
Common next steps from Data Engineer positions include Senior Data Engineer, ML Engineer, Data Platform Lead. Progression depends on whether you lean toward technical depth, people management, or product strategy.

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