Staff Data Engineer, AI Engineering

Why Hershey:

At The Hershey Company, our culture is rooted in purpose and inspired by Milton Hershey’s enduring vision that business should create opportunity for others. Through our commitment to corporate philanthropy, we create positive impact by supporting communities, helping children thrive, and operating as a business for good. This includes our deep and long standing partnership with Milton Hershey School, where we invest in education, workforce readiness, and hands on engagement to help students succeed beyond the classroom. Supported by strategic grantmaking, product donations, cross brand collaboration, and strong employee volunteerism, Hershey offers a place to work where making a difference-locally and globally-is part of how we do business every day.

About The Hershey Company

The Hershey Company is an industry-leading snacks company known for making more moments of goodness through its iconic brands. With a strong portfolio across chocolate, confectionery, and salty snacks, Hershey delights consumers every day. Our beloved brands include Hershey’s, Reese’s, KitKat®, Dots Pretzels, Lesser Evil, Jolly Rancher, Twizzlers, Ice Breakers, and more.

At Hershey, we are committed to making a meaningful difference in the communities where we live, work, and do business. This commitment originated with our founder, Milton Hershey, and continues to shape who we are today.

Guided by our employee value proposition, Lead Today. Create Tomorrow, we empower our people to drive impact now while shaping what comes next. Our One Hershey mindset brings teams together across functions, geographies, and businesses, enabling us to operate with speed, collaboration, and shared purpose.

The Hershey Company is proud to be recognized as a top employer in the United States, reflecting our commitment to our people, culture, and purpose.

How will you fit in the big picture?

The Staff Data Engineer is a critical member of Hershey's Enterprise Data & Analytics organization, responsible for delivering a seamless, governed, and scalable AI platform experience across the enterprise. This role bridges AI engineering, platform engineering, and product thinking to ensure AI and data tools are easy to discover, adopt, and operationalize.

You will own the lifecycle of AI platforms including Databricks, Azure ML, and complementary technologies by evaluating new capabilities, implementing governance controls, enabling self-service access, and continuously optimizing the user experience. Working closely with data scientists, AI engineers, software developers, security teams, and data governance leaders, you will help accelerate AI adoption across manufacturing, supply chain, quality, and commercial use cases while ensuring compliance, security, and cost efficiency.

This position is ideal for candidates with backgrounds in AI engineering, platform engineering, MLOps, DevOps, SRE, or data engineering who are passionate about building platforms that empower others to innovate.

What will you do?

• Own and evolve the AI platform roadmap across Databricks, Azure ML, and related technologies, prioritizing enhancements based on business needs, adoption metrics, and user feedback.
• Pilot, evaluate, and operationalize new AI platform capabilities, making recommendations on enterprise adoption and standardization.
• Build and maintain governed, scalable AI infrastructure including compute environments, deployment pipelines, monitoring solutions, feature stores, and AI services.
• Design and implement "paved road" solutions that provide secure, compliant, and repeatable workflows for AI and machine learning development.
• Embed AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management (AI TRiSM) practices into platform processes, including monitoring, auditability, access controls, and model governance.
• Develop self-service experiences that enable teams to discover approved models, datasets, templates, tools, and AI services.
• Optimize platform performance and cloud spending through FinOps practices, automation, usage analytics, and resource management.
• Partner with Data Governance, Security, Infrastructure, and Analytics teams to ensure platform capabilities support enterprise standards.
• Support AI initiatives focused on manufacturing and supply chain challenges including predictive maintenance, demand forecasting, anomaly detection, and quality optimization.
• Foster AI adoption through communities of practice, champion networks, training, and continuous feedback loops.

Minimum Education & Requirements

Minimum Requirements

Experience:

• 3-5+ years of relevant experience in platform engineering, AI engineering, ML engineering, data engineering, DevOps, SRE, or related technical disciplines, aligned to Hershey Level 50 requirements.
• Hands-on experience with Databricks, Azure ML, AWS SageMaker, or comparable enterprise AI/ML platforms.
• Experience implementing MLOps practices including CI/CD, model deployment, monitoring, automation, and lifecycle management.
• Knowledge of cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, distributed computing, infrastructure-as-code, and platform automation.
• Experience with data governance, security controls, RBAC, audit logging, metadata management, and compliance processes.
• Strong programming and automation skills using Python, SQL, APIs, and modern software engineering practices.
• Experience managing cloud costs and implementing FinOps best practices for AI workloads.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across technical and business teams while translating complex concepts into practical solutions.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience supporting manufacturing, supply chain, retail, or CPG environments.
• Experience building self-service developer platforms or internal engineering platforms.
• Exposure to generative AI, AI agents, LLM orchestration frameworks, and emerging AI technologies.
• Product-oriented mindset with experience managing roadmaps, adoption metrics, and user feedback programs.
• Familiarity with responsible AI frameworks, AI governance, and AI TRiSM principles.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Advanced degree preferred but not required.

Benefits and Perks

At Hershey, we offer competitive pay and a comprehensive total rewards package designed to support your wellbeing, financial security, and life outside of work.

• Health & Wellbeing: Medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus wellness programs that support your physical and mental health.
• Financial Security: Competitive pay, annual incentive opportunities, and a 401(k) with company match.
• Time Off & Flexibility: Paid time off, company holidays, and flexible ways of working where applicable.
• Growth & Development: Career development programs, learning opportunities, and internal mobility.

Benefits may vary based on role, location, and eligibility.

The Hershey Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The policy of The Hershey Company is to extend opportunities to qualified applicants and employees on an equal basis regardless of an individual's race, color, gender, age, national origin, religion, citizenship status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other categories protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.

The Hershey Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Minority/Female/Disabled/Protected Veterans.

You may request a reasonable accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our online application process as a result of a disability.

You can request an accommodation via phone or email.

To request an accommodation via phone, please call +1 877-804-1794 and leave a voicemail with your contact information. You may also email a request for accommodation to [email protected]. Please be sure to include “Accommodation Needed” in the subject line. This will ensure that your email is routed to the appropriate contact who will handle your request.