Forward Deployed AI Engineer - Remote

EMPLOYER IS A CONTRACTOR FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. THIS POSITION REQUIRES U.S. CITIZENSHIP. An active security clearance is preferred. Clearance eligibility is required.
What You’ll Do

• Embed with strategic customers as a technical partner, working from problem discovery to solution implementation and customer adoption.
• Architect, build, deploy, and operate agentic Generative AI systems: APIs, data processing ETL pipelines, integration layers, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and context engineering.
• Work in cloud, on-prem, and edge/air-gapped environments to ensure software can run where the mission demands.
• Prototype and deploy systems leveraging the core products and design patterns of the Unicorn Delivery Service (UDS); bring back insights from the field for continuous product improvement.
• Scope, sequence, and lead delivery of solutions: define living roadmaps, set priorities, trade off speed vs quality vs scope, work across internal teams and customer stakeholders to drive clarity and remove blockers early.
• Codify reusable patterns for mission environments: build tools, internal frameworks, playbooks so future deployments are faster, safer, and repeatable.
• Act as the technical face to customer leadership: communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, build trust, manage expectations, and ensure successful scale and mission adoption. This is a customer-facing role.
• Ability and interest to travel up as needed to client sites, but flexible based on personal preferences.

• 3+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience (backend or full-stack), ideally in customer-facing or government environments (DoD, intelligence, public sector) or analogous high-assurance contexts.
• Strong backend engineering skills: production-grade code in Python or Type Script; deep familiarity with designing services, APIs, data pipelines, integrations, and backend frameworks.
• Familiarity with LLMs or generative AI systems — be able to explain the fundamentals of Context Engineering and understand how model behavior connects to product/mission experience, and how AI capabilities integrate into larger system architectures.
• Strong ability to work in ambiguity: define scope, sequence work, make trade-offs between speed, quality, and scope; remove blockers; deliver under pressure in dynamic mission-driven settings.
• Excellent communication skills: able to translate complex technical details into clear messaging for non-technical stakeholders; work cross-functionally; build relationships with customers and internal teams.
• Mission-oriented mindset. Have an understanding that our work is supporting the defense and freedom of the nation.

• Experience with deploying applications on Kubernetes inside of air-gapped or secure environments.
• Experience with Information Retrieval fundamentals including knowledge of keyword and vector based search, document parsing and chunking, document reranking, and SQL/No
  
  SQL search engines.
• Experience with developing, executing, and maintaining LLM evaluations.
• Experience with open source LLM or SLM models (Llama3, Mixtral, Gemma, Phi) including inference frameworks, structured output, fine-tuning, and model architecture reconfiguration.

As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer at Defense Unicorns, you will directly contribute to accelerating warfighter capability. By working at the intersection of backend software engineering, secure delivery platforms, and mission-driven deployments, you’ll help deliver software updates in minutes instead of months — enabling operational advantage, agility, and freedom for the nation. You will not just build code — you’ll deploy impact where it matters most.

Remote - USA

$148,750 - $201,250 USD

• Premiums are 100% Company Paid
• Health Savings Account
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• 401k Retirement Plan
• Company Stock Options
• Home Office Budget

• We offer all full-time Unicorns Flexible Time Off (FTO) plus all Federal Holidays, one week for Thanksgiving, and two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s

• Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions
• Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees)

At Defense Unicorns, we're committed to diversity. If you're enthusiastic about the role but don't match every criteria, we encourage you to apply. You could be the perfect fit for this or another role! Defense Unicorns is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.