Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Public Sector

Overview

At Scale, we build the AI systems behind some of the country’s most important decisions.

On the Public Sector Engineering team, you will embed directly with U.S. government customers, including the Army, Air Force, Joint commands and Intelligence Community, to build and deploy AI applications that support their most critical missions. This is a hybrid customer‑facing engineering role. You will sit with the people whose problems you are solving, own delivery from first prototype to production, and ship software that customers adopt and rely on in the field.

Model performance matters, timelines are urgent, and ambiguity is the norm. Your work directly shapes what Scale’s platform can do for the public sector.

• Embed with government customers to understand their mission, scope the problem, and translate it into working software.
• Own delivery end‑to‑end: design, build, deploy, and maintain solutions at customer sites, from prototype to stable production.
• Build robust backend systems and data integrations that connect customer environments to Scale’s platform and back.
• Partner with product and engineering to feed field signals back into the roadmap, so once you build patterns, the entire team can reuse them.
• Serve as the technical point of contact for customer stakeholders, guiding adoption and maximizing mission impact.

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, ideally in customer‑facing, forward‑deployed or government contexts.
• Strong production coding in Python and Type Script (or comparable modern languages).
• Comfort across the stack, including cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), containers, Linux, and networking fundamentals.
• Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments and make sound trade‑offs under pressure.
• An active TS/SCI clearance, or eligibility to obtain one.
• Experience building or deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models (bonus).
• Familiarity with Node.js and React, Kubernetes and Docker, and Terraform.
• Data engineering background covering ETL pipelines, data modeling, and data governance.

This role requires significant time on‑site with customers. Expect 25% travel, with up to 50% travel as necessary, and/or relocation to Washington DC or St. Louis.

Compensation packages include base salary, equity, and benefits. Salary ranges are:

• San Francisco, New York, Seattle: $184,000 - $292,560 USD
• Hawaii, Washington DC, Texas, Colorado: $165,600 - $263,304 USD
• St. Louis: $138,000 - $219,420 USD
• Honolulu, Hawaii: $138,000 - $219,420 USD

Benefits include comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage; retirement benefits; a learning and development stipend; generous PTO; and an optional commuter stipend.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or veteran status. We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities.