Forward Deployment Engineer - Merriam, KS

Lead Forward Deployment Engineer

Merriam, Kansas, United States

We have an exciting opportunity for a Staff Forward Deployment Engineer at our Merriam, KS office. The Staff Forward Deployment Engineer is the most senior contributor in the Staff Forward Deployment Engineer track. Anchored on a strategic AI initiative or a multi-domain AI portfolio, this role is build‑first. The Staff Forward Deployment Engineer is hands‑on, building using AI‑Assisted Development, orchestrating delivery (running stand‑ups, coordinating across business and IT teams, clarifying priority, and confirming direction with leadership), and setting and operationalizing the technical patterns and standards the Forward Deployment Engineer team follows.

The Staff Forward Deployment Engineer leads through the work, shipping the hardest, highest‑leverage parts of an initiative and turning what they build into reusable patterns for the rest of the team.

At Seaboard Foods, we create the most sought‑after pork. A top U.S. pork producer and processor and leading exporter to 30+ countries, we are committed to bringing excellence to the table, seeking a better way to produce wholesome pork and connect every step between our farms and family tables. More than 5,400 employees in five states work on our farms, feed mills, and processing plant to produce Prairie Fresh pork, ensuring the well‑being of our animals, the environment, our employees, and the communities we call home.

We are a Fortune 500 employer, recently nominated by the Business Journal as one of the “Best Places to Work,” representing our dynamic culture, where our employees can contribute and understand why they matter.

Performs the full set of Forward Deployment Engineer duties, with additional expectations that distinguish this level. The work breaks down into three buckets:

• Own end‑to‑end delivery of the most complex parts of a strategic AI initiative, including scoping, design, build, test, and rollout. AI‑Assisted Development is the primary delivery mode, with Pro‑code used where it is not enough.
• Embed within customer teams to acquire deep domain knowledge, iterate in tight feedback loops, and ship working software that drives measurable business outcomes.
• Carry the hardest technical work in the initiative (integrations, ambiguous data problems, novel agent or workflow patterns) and demonstrate that AI‑Assisted Development can deliver it at production quality.
• Drive adoption hands‑on through demos, working prototypes, and embedded support during rollout; treat working software as the primary status mechanism.
• Stay current on emerging AI tools, agent platforms, and modern delivery practices, and pull proven patterns into the work as quickly as they earn their place.
• Partner with Application Support Engineers to confirm releases are operationally ready, with monitoring, runbooks, deployment approach, and escalation paths in place before go‑live.

• Run the day‑to‑day cadence for the initiative, including stand‑ups, working sessions, and lightweight planning (milestones, dependencies, cutovers) that keeps work moving and dependencies visible.
• Coordinate across business areas and IT teams (Architecture, Platform Engineering, Data Platform, Application Support, and external vendors) to surface and resolve blockers before they slow delivery.
• Clarify priority when the queue is ambiguous: pull the right people into the room, force the trade‑off conversation, and confirm direction with the sponsoring leader so the team can keep building.
• Coordinate with other FDEs on cross‑initiative dependencies and capacity trade‑offs that span beyond a single FDE’s scope.

• Set reusable patterns and standards for AI‑Assisted Development (prompt structure, code organization, testing, and review practices) so the FDE team converges on what works.
• Lead design and implementation reviews across the FDE team to raise quality and reduce long‑term support burden.
• Mentor FDEs and Associate FDEs through pairing, code review, and quick…