AI Data Science Engineer
Pubblicato il 10-09-2026 - Zespri International in Bologna
We like to think of ourselves as fruit on a mission and as rebels with a cause: to help people, communities and the environment around the world thrive through the goodness of kiwifruit. We work with around 2,800 New Zealand and 1,500 international growers and post-harvest companies to source the best-quality Zespri Kiwifruit which we supply through our distribution partners to wholesale and retail customers. We are one of New Zealand’s best-known international brands, dedicated to creating sustainable long-term value for growers.
Based in Bologna, the Data and AI Engineer is accountable for the data backbone on which every analytics, AI, and BI initiative depends (through the entire data lifecycle). The role designs, builds and owns the pipelines, data quality and governance that turn fragmented, manual processes into a trusted, accessible single source of truth, building the agentic AI and LLM-powered automation that replaces repetitive workflows. The Data and AI Engineer prepares the ground (data quality, curation, governance) and owns the automation layer,
embedding cross-functional analytics support and data literacy through direct collaboration across teams and coordination with the global Zespri digital team.
Data Foundation & Pipeline Engineering
- Design, develop and maintain data pipelines to ingest, process and transform data from different sources into a cloud platform
- Connect currently unintegrated platforms through robust API integrations.
- Develop and maintain feature stores, data catalogues and curated datasets to deliver the ZGS Data Strategy’s AI initiatives.
Data Quality, Governance & Audit
- Audit data availability and quality across ZGS: profile datasets for completeness, consistency and duplication defining ZGS’s data reliability metrics and KPIs.
- Stand up the data governance framework: designate the system-of-record platform for each data domain, remove duplication across platforms, and own data definitions.
- Phase out Excel-based pro