Company Description

The OECD is a global economic forum working with 36 member countries and more than 100 emerging and developing economies to make better policies for better lives. Our mission is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. The Organisation provides a unique forum in which governments work together to share experiences on what drives economic, social and environmental change, seeking solutions to common problems.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental organisation committed to advancing security of energy supply, economic growth and environmental sustainability through energy policy co-operation.  The IEA operates as an autonomous body within the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.  Both the OECD and the IEA seek opportunities to work with an increasing number of non-members of growing importance to the world economy.

IEA’s Information Systems Unit (ISU) provides the IT infrastructure, systems, and applications that support the IEA’s core substantive work, including the management of energy statistics databases and related applications. The IEA is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to build and lead a new team focused on the ongoing modernization of our data architecture. This leadership role will shape a high-performance centralized data platform, grounded in data warehouse principles and modern engineering practices. The selected individual will bridge AI innovation and robust data and software engineering, overseeing the development of scalable data pipelines and APIs that power both traditional analytics and emerging AI applications—such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector search, and semantic tools. By combining modern software practices with strong data architecture, the role ensures that data is consistently structured, governed, and exposed in ways that support automation, reproducibility, and long-term maintainability.

The selected candidate will begin in January 2026 and will work under the supervision of the Lead Data Solution Architect and the Head of the Information Systems Unit.

Job Description

Main Responsibilities

• Work with ISU and other teams to analyse, develop, test and deploy optimised, data and business intelligence solutions to help manage our growing data infrastructure.
• Design and lead the development of a robust, secure, and scalable data infrastructure to support internal and external data platforms.
• Engineer scalable and maintainable software systems, building backend services in Python (e.g., FastAPI, Flask) to expose data and AI capabilities to analysts and external users.
• Lead the development of LLM-based applications including chatbots, semantic search tools, and RAG systems that interact with internal and public data.
• Evaluate and deploy open-source and commercial language models (e.g., LLaMA, Mistral, GPT models), including self-hosted inference using vLLM, Hugging Face Transformers, and Azure-hosted solutions.
• Design hybrid infrastructure using both Azure and new on-premise GPU servers to ensure cost control, low latency, and data sovereignty.
• Build and optimize vector databases (e.g., Milvus) and pipelines for embedding generation, chunking strategies, and document indexing at scale.
• Develop and maintain containerized environments using Docker, Kubernetes (AKS/on-prem), and Helm to support reproducible deployments across staging and production.
• Champion software development best practices including version control (GitLab), CI/CD, code review, observability, and structured documentation.
• Oversee the data warehouse ecosystem and ensure that AI applications integrate smoothly with enterprise data assets.
• Promote dual delivery strategies (on-prem and cloud), ensuring flexibility and data sovereignty in AI deployments.
• Document architecture, and report on project progress with structured framing and outcomes.
• Mentor future engineers in the team, ensure strong documentation practices, and facilitate peer development and code familiarity.
• Align all initiatives with the broader IEA digital strategy, acting as a trusted engineering advisor within the organization.

Innovative Projects You Could Own

• AI Infrastructure for Hybrid RAG & Chatbots: Design and operate a secure, scalable AI infrastructure for RAG-based and chatbot solutions using Azure and on-premises LLMs. Leverage new on-premise GPU capacity to host, fine-tune, and serve models using tools like vLLM, LangChain, and Hugging Face Transformers.

• Designing Secure AI-Powered Tools: Lead the development of AI applications—like dataset finders and report assistants—using RAG pipelines, vector DBs, and LLMs. Solutions are confidentiality-aware, metadata-aligned, and deployed securely via Teams or Posit Connect, leveraging both on-prem and cloud infrastructure as appropriate.

• Strengthening Reusable Code for IEA Data Operations: Drive the evolution of IEA’s internal Python library that underpins our data workflows. Ensure contributions follow standardized, reusable design patterns. Your work will promote consistency, maintainability, and long-term usability across the organization.

• Automating Data Integrity for the IEA: Develop robust pipelines that ensure the data behind IEA’s publications is accurate, consistent, and tightly aligned with narrative content. Apply machine learning and AI where appropriate, prioritizing transparency and precision to uphold IEA’s high standards.

• Scaling High-Impact Solutions: Maintain and evolve our SQL Server–based data warehouse ecosystem, supporting both operational and read-only analytical layers. Ensure high availability through Always On Availability Groups, and keep ETL pipelines consistent and scalable.

• Prototyping: Lead early-stage experimentation—spotting high-value opportunities and quickly building prototypes using existing infrastructure. Turn promising concepts into production-grade solutions through agile, iterative development.

In addition to leading key projects, you’ll have space to innovate—partnering with analysts and engineers to frame and deliver AI-driven solutions with real impact.

Qualifications

Ideal Candidate Profile

Academic Background

• Undergraduate degree or higher in Computer Science, Statistics, Economics, Mathematics, Management Information Systems, Data Management, or a related field.
• A master's degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI—or relevant work experience—is considered an asset.

Professional Background

• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, infrastructure, or software development, with a strong focus on building and maintaining data platforms, pipelines, and services for analytics or AI applications.
• Excellent programming skills in Python, with a good grasp of software engineering principles.
• Skilled in agile delivery, version control, testing, and CI/CD.
• Cloud Infrastructure: Proven experience with Microsoft Azure and familiarity with key services (e.g., VM, AKS, SQL Managed Instance).
• AI Infrastructure & Tooling: Experience with tools such as Milvus (vector database), Langchain, and Langflow to develop scalable RAG systems, chatbot backends and other model-driven applications.
• Experience building data-driven applications or APIs, with awareness of usability and long-term maintainability.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs, LangChain, HuggingFace, LlamaIndex, vector databases (Milvus or similar), and RAG pipelines for AI use cases; capable of experimenting and delivering results.
• Data Engineering: Excellent grasp of ETL design, data pipelines (e.g., Dagster), and SQL-based data warehousing.
• Systems Administration: Experience with Linux systems, virtualization (e.g., Hyper-V, VMware), and general server management.
• Ability to translate high-level or evolving needs into structured solutions.
• Ability to see across projects and align solutions with the broader data governance and strategy of the IEA.
• Demonstrated self-motivation and ability to work independently as well as to work collaboratively and effectively in small technical/engineering teams

Core Competencies

OECD staff are expected to demonstrate behaviours aligned to six core competencies which will be assessed as part of this hiring processes: Vision and Strategy (Level 1); Enable People (Level 1); Ethics and Integrity (Level 2); Collaboration and Horizontality (Level 2); Achieve Results (Level 2); Innovate and Embrace Change (Level 2).

There are three possible levels for each competency. The level for each competency is determined according to the specific needs of each job role and its associated grade.

To learn more about the definitions for each competency for levels 1-3, please refer to OECD Core Competencies

Languages

• Excellent knowledge of written and spoken English; working knowledge of French would be an advantage.

Additional Information

Closing Date

• This vacancy should be filled by the end of December 2025, and applications should reach us no later than midnight August 17, 2025 (Paris time).

Contract Duration

• 24-month fixed term appointment, with the possibility of renewal.

What the OECD offers

• Depending on level of experience, monthly salary starts at 6,717.19 EUR, plus allowances based on eligibility, exempt of French income tax.
• Click here to consult the Staff Regulations applicable to officials of the OECD. Please note that from 1 July 2025, all Official appointments will be made under the OECD’s new contractual modalities.
• Click here to learn more about what we offer and why the OECD is a great place to work. 
• Click here to browse our People Management Guidebook and learn more about all aspects relating to people at the OECD, our workplace environment and many other policies supporting staff in their daily life.
• Please note that the appointment may be made at one grade lower in the specified job family, based on the qualifications and professional experience of the selected applicant.
• This vacancy may be used to create a pool of candidates for comparable positions, both for open-ended and fixed-term functions.

Selection Process

For retained candidates, written tests/video-recorded interviews are foreseen in September 2025 and panel interviews are planned for October 2025.

The OECD is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes the applications of all qualified candidates who are nationals of OECD member countries, irrespective of their racial or ethnic origin, opinions or beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, health or disabilities.

The OECD promotes an optimal use of resources in order to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. Staff members are encouraged to actively contribute to this goal.