Data and AI Specialist-IT

The American University of Sharjah is seeking a Data and AI Specialist. This role centers on practical data analysis, business intelligence, and AI-driven solutions across the university. It covers designing and maintaining Power BI reports and dashboards, building and supporting AI, agentic, and automation solutions, and developing the data warehouse, data platform, pipelines, and integrations with core systems. The role also establishes data governance practices, gathers requirements from stakeholders, and translates business needs into governed, production-ready solutions that support data-informed decision-making.

• Design, develop, and maintain Power BI reports and dashboards, including data models, DAX measures, and Power Query transformations.
• Design and maintain the institutional data warehouse, data platform, and data pipelines, including ingestion, ETL/ELT, dimensional modeling, SQL development, incremental refresh, and integrations with core systems such as Banner and Oracle Fusion.
• Design and implement LLM-powered and agentic solutions using enterprise AI platforms, including context engineering, tool/function calling, orchestration, and memory.
• Build retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems over institutional data, including embeddings, vector search, and grounding for accurate, source-based responses.
• Build and support workflow automation and system integrations across the institution, including chatbots, REST APIs, and process automation.
• Implement AI guardrails, evaluation, and responsible-AI practices, and deploy, monitor, and optimize AI solutions in production for accuracy, reliability, and cost.
• Recommend and deploy SaaS and AI solutions, including vendor and platform assessment and requirements definition, and support the procurement team through the acquisition process.
• Establish and maintain data governance and security practices, including data definitions, ownership, audit trails, row-level security, PII handling, and least-privilege access.
• Apply the software development lifecycle, version control (Git), and deployment pipelines to move solutions from requirements through development and testing to production, following the standard change process.
• Produce technical and executive documentation, provide user training and support, and collaborate with cross-functional IT teams to deliver secure, reliable, and interoperable solutions.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Computer Engineering, MIS, or a related discipline.
• Minimum five 5 years of experience in data analytics, business intelligence, and AI or automation solution development, ideally within an enterprise or higher education environment.
• Ability to manage and prioritize workload to deliver high-quality work products on time with minimal direction.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously with a high degree of accuracy and attention to detail.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to translate business needs into technical solutions.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to work with both technical and non-technical users.
• Business Intelligence
  - Power BI report and dashboard development, DAX, Power Query, semantic modeling, and gateway management.
• Data & SQL - SQL query development, relational databases (Oracle preferred), data warehousing, and dimensional modeling.
• AI - LLM-powered and agentic solutions, context engineering, tool/function calling, RAG, embeddings, and vector search.
• Responsible AI & Evaluation - guardrails, output validation, evaluation, and production monitoring.
• Cloud
  - Microsoft Azure (AI services, App Service, Key Vault, Entra ) and data platforms such as Microsoft Fabric.
• System Integration - REST API development and consumption, authentication, webhook patterns, and workflow automation.
• Data Governance & Security - data cataloging, ownership, PII handling, and least-privilege access.

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related discipline.
• ITIL, PMP, Scrum, or other project management certifications.
• Certifications in cloud, data engineering, or AI-related technologies.

AUS is an equal opportunity employer. We adhere to a policy of making employment decisions without regard to race, color, age, gender, religion, national origin, disability or marital status. Opportunities for employment are based solely upon one’s qualifications.