The posting
Job Description
Job Summary
We are looking for an experienced AI & BI Automation Technical Lead to design, enhance and scale AI-powered Business Intelligence automation solutions.
The role combines hands-on Microsoft Power Platform, Python, Azure and Generative AI engineering with technical ownership of BI automation, automated quality validation and report delivery capabilities. The individual will convert business and operational requirements into scalable, reliable and reusable technology solutions.
The successful candidate will work closely with global BI hubs, Technology teams, architects and business stakeholders to automate BI processes, improve report quality, reduce manual effort and increase delivery efficiency. This role requires a strong balance of technical depth, BI domain understanding, solution ownership and stakeholder engagement.
Key Responsibilities
1. AI and BI Automation Solution Ownership
- Own the technical design, enhancement and ongoing evolution of AI-enabled BI automation capabilities.
- Develop scalable solutions for report onboarding, scheduling, refresh, monitoring, quality validation and delivery.
- Convert manual BI processes into reusable and configurable automation workflows.
- Define and maintain the technical roadmap with BI, Technology and business stakeholders.
- Evaluate AI and automation opportunities based on business value, feasibility, scalability and adoption potential.
- Ensure solutions can support multiple regions, clients, report types and BI hubs.
2. Python and Application Engineering
- Design and develop scalable, cloud-native applications using Python.
- Build and maintain APIs, backend services and business-rule engines.
- Develop reliable solutions using object-oriented programming, reusable components and established design patterns.
- Perform automated data validation, missing-value detection, duplicate analysis, anomaly detection and variance analysis using Pandas, Polars or equivalent frameworks.
- Develop integrations across BI reporting, automation, quality-control and delivery platforms.
- Integrate Power Platform applications with Azure services, SQL Server, REST APIs, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Power BI and other enterprise systems.
- Optimize applications for performance, reliability, maintainability and scalability.
3. Generative AI and Intelligent Automation
- Develop and integrate enterprise Generative AI solutions using services such as Azure OpenAI, Llama, LangChain and vector search.
- Build AI-enabled solutions using Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, Microsoft Copilot Studio, AI Builder, custom prompts, agent flows and generative actions.
- Apply Retrieval-Augmented Generation, prompt engineering and structured AI workflows to BI use cases.
- Use AI to generate executive summaries, business insights, recommendations and exception explanations.
- Design controls to validate AI-generated output before it is used in business processes.
- Evaluate Small Language Models for cost-efficient or low-latency deployments.
- Explore AI agents and intelligent workflows for report creation, quality validation, monitoring and operational support.
- Apply deterministic validation wherever accuracy, traceability and repeatability are required.
4. BI Process and Quality Automation
- Understand the complete BI report lifecycle, including requirement intake, report creation, refresh, validation, approval and delivery.
- Automate repeatable activities across Excel-based reporting and other BI platforms.
- Develop configurable quality rules for data checks, business validation and change detection.
- Support report-level and worksheet-level checks such as blanks, duplicates, formula continuity, reporting periods, product or market changes and variance thresholds.
- Design monitoring and exception-management capabilities that enable users to identify and resolve failures quickly.
- Partner with BI subject-matter experts to convert business validation requirements into scalable technical rules.
- Establish measurable quality controls and audit trails for automated processes.
5. Microsoft Power Platform Engineering
- Design, develop and support enterprise applications using Power Apps, Power Automate and Dataverse.
- Build user interfaces, workflow automation, approval processes and data-driven applications aligned with BI operational requirements.
- Design secure Dataverse data models, roles, permissions and integration patterns.
- Apply Power Platform governance, Data Loss Prevention policies, environment strategy and reusable solution standards.
- Use custom connectors and APIs to extend Power Platform capabilities and integrate with enterprise services.
6. Architecture, Cloud and DevOps
- Contribute to scalable, extensible and secure solution architecture.
- Develop distributed, event-driven and microservices-based solutions where appropriate.
- Work with Azure, AWS or GCP cloud services based on approved enterprise architecture.
- Develop and integrate Azure capabilities including Azure Functions, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, Microsoft Entra ID and Azure Data Factory.
- Implement CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and version-control practices using Git.
- Manage Power Platform Application Lifecycle Management using solutions, connection references, environment variables, service principals and controlled DEV-to-TEST-to-PROD deployments.
- Support containerization and orchestration using Docker and Kubernetes where required.
- Apply Infrastructure as Code practices using Terraform, Pulumi or equivalent tools.
- Implement logging, monitoring and observability using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry or equivalent tools.
- Ensure compliance with enterprise security, privacy, access-control and engineering standards.
7. Production Reliability and Operational Support
- Monitor application performance, automation success rates and production reliability.
- Lead technical investigation and root-cause analysis for production incidents.
- Implement preventive actions to reduce recurring failures and operational dependency.
- Define alerts, recovery mechanisms and escalation processes for critical failures.
- Maintain appropriate backup, versioning and recovery capabilities.
- Ensure solutions are documented and are not dependent on individual team members.
- Balance new feature development with application stability, maintainability and technical-debt reduction.
- Independently manage the complete product development lifecycle, from requirements and architecture through development, testing, deployment, monitoring and production support.
8. Global Stakeholder Engagement and Adoption
- Work with global BI hubs to understand operational requirements and identify automation opportunities.
- Translate business requirements into clear functional and technical specifications.
- Conduct solution demonstrations, technical walkthroughs and user-training sessions.
- Support hub onboarding, testing, feedback collection and adoption.
- Communicate solution capabilities, limitations, dependencies and rollout requirements clearly.
- Coordinate with BI, Technology, architecture, infrastructure, security and business teams.
- Build stakeholder confidence through transparent progress reporting and measurable outcomes.
9. Technical Leadership and Team Development
- Provide technical direction to developers and BI automation specialists.
- Review solution designs, application code and testing approaches.
- Establish coding, documentation, testing and deployment standards.
- Mentor team members in Python, AI, cloud engineering and BI automation.
- Support work prioritization, release planning and dependency management.
- Promote approved AI-assisted development tools, including GitHub Copilot, to improve productivity.
- Create reusable frameworks, components and engineering patterns that can be adopted across the BI organization.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Information Technology or a related field.
- 6–8 years of experience in software development, data engineering, BI automation or AI application development.
- Demonstrated experience owning technical solutions from requirement gathering through production deployment and support.
- Experience working with cross-functional and geographically distributed teams.
- Strong communication, analytical and problem-solving skills.
Must-Have Skills
Technical Engineering
- Strong proficiency in Python and object-oriented programming.
- Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms and software design patterns.
- Hands-on experience developing APIs and backend services.
- Experience with Pandas, Polars or similar data-processing frameworks.
- Experience with Pytest or comparable automated testing frameworks.
- Experience with Git, CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
- Experience with Azure, AWS or GCP.
- Practical experience with Azure Functions, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, Microsoft Entra ID and Azure Data Factory.
- Understanding of distributed systems, microservices and event-driven architecture.
- Strong debugging, performance-optimization and root-cause-analysis skills.
AI and Automation
- Hands-on experience developing Generative AI or language-model-based applications.
- Experience with Azure OpenAI, LangChain, Llama or equivalent technologies.
- Hands-on experience with Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, Microsoft Copilot Studio, AI Builder, custom prompts, agent flows or generative actions.
- Knowledge of Retrieval-Augmented Generation, vector databases and vector search.
- Experience with prompt engineering and structured AI-output validation.
- Ability to combine AI capabilities with deterministic business rules.
- Understanding of responsible AI, data privacy, security and model limitations.
BI and Data
- Experience with Business Intelligence or reporting automation.
- Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Power Platform, especially Power Apps, Power Automate and Dataverse.
- Understanding of report refresh, data validation, quality-control and delivery processes.
- Strong knowledge of SQL and relational databases.
- Strong practical knowledge of SQL Server, including complex queries, views, stored procedures, permissions, performance optimization and application integration.
- Experience handling structured data, Excel workbooks or comparable reporting outputs.
- Ability to translate BI and business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Experience developing configurable data-quality or business-validation rules.
- Experience with Power Platform Application Lifecycle Management, including solutions, connection references, environment variables, service principals and DEV-to-PROD deployment controls.
- Experience integrating Power Platform applications with Azure, SQL Server, APIs, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Power BI and other enterprise systems.
Leadership and Stakeholder Management
- Experience owning technical features or solutions end to end.
- Ability to independently manage the complete product lifecycle, covering requirements, architecture, development, testing, deployment, monitoring and production support.
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts in simple business language.
- Experience working with business stakeholders, architects and engineering teams.
- Ability to conduct solution demonstrations, requirement discussions and technical reviews.
- Ability to mentor developers and establish engineering standards.
Good-to-Have Skills
- Experience with Power BI, Excel automation, Power Query or other enterprise reporting platforms.
- Experience developing automated report creation, report refresh or report-quality solutions.
- Experience with Small Language Model deployment or fine-tuning.
- Knowledge of SQL and NoSQL persistence models.
- Familiarity with Terraform, Pulumi or other Infrastructure as Code tools.
- Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry or comparable observability tools.
- Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
- Familiarity with GitHub Copilot or equivalent AI-assisted development tools.
- Experience working in Agile or Scrum delivery models.
- Experience supporting enterprise applications in a production environment.
- Exposure to workflow automation, robotic process automation or agent-based solutions.
Key Success Measures
- Percentage of eligible reports or processes automated.
- Reduction in manual effort and operational hours.
- Improvement in report quality and automated validation coverage.
- Reduction in recurring production failures.
- Automation success rate and application availability.
- Reduction in report refresh, validation and delivery time.
- Adoption of automation solutions across global BI hubs.
- Number of reusable AI and automation capabilities delivered.
- Successful release and adoption of Power Platform and Azure-integrated applications across controlled environments.
- Stakeholder satisfaction and realized business value.
- Quality of technical documentation, knowledge transfer and team capability development.
Expected Profile
The ideal candidate is not only a strong Python and AI engineer. The candidate should understand BI operations, identify automation opportunities and own solutions from concept through global adoption. The person should be comfortable moving between:
- Business requirements and technical architecture.
- Hands-on development and technical leadership.
- AI innovation and production reliability.
- Global stakeholder engagement and detailed problem-solving.
- Short-term delivery needs and long-term platform scalability.
Additional Information
Our Benefits
- Flexible working environment
- Volunteer time off
- LinkedIn Learning
- Employee-Assistance-Program (EAP)
NIQ may utilize artificial intelligence (AI) tools at various stages of the recruitment process, including résumé screening, candidate assessments, interview scheduling, job matching, communication support, and certain administrative tasks that help streamline workflows. These tools are intended to improve efficiency and support fair and consistent evaluation based on job-related criteria. All use of AI is governed by NIQ’s principles of fairness, transparency, human oversight, and inclusion. Final hiring decisions are made exclusively by humans. NIQ regularly reviews its AI tools to help mitigate bias and ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations. If you have questions, require accommodations, or wish to request human review were permitted by law, please contact your local HR representative. For more information, please visit NIQ’s AI Safety Policies and Guiding Principles: https://nielseniq.com/global/en/info/niqs-ai-safety-policies/
About NIQ
NIQ is the world’s leading consumer intelligence company, delivering the most complete understanding of consumer buying behavior and revealing new pathways to growth. In 2023, NIQ combined with GfK, bringing together the two industry leaders with unparalleled global reach. With a holistic retail read and the most comprehensive consumer insights—delivered with advanced analytics through state-of-the-art platforms—NIQ delivers the Full View™. NIQ is an Advent International portfolio company with operations in 100+ markets, covering more than 90% of the world’s population.
For more information, visit NIQ.com
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Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
At NIQ, we are steadfast in our commitment to fostering an inclusive workplace that mirrors the rich diversity of the communities and markets we serve. We believe that embracing a wide range of perspectives drives innovation and excellence. All employment decisions at NIQ are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws. We invite individuals who share our dedication to inclusivity and equity to join us in making a meaningful impact. To learn more about our ongoing efforts in diversity and inclusion, please visit the https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/diversity-inclusion
