Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer - Data Engineering & GenAI
Location:
Washington, DC Metro Area
Work Model:
Hybrid - expected in the office/customer sites 2 3 days per week
Employment Type:
Full Time/Contract
Experience Level: Principal (8 14 years)
About the Role

We are looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) who combines strong software and data engineering fundamentals with hands‑on Generative AI expertise and exceptional customer‑facing skills. This is not a traditional implementation, solutions consulting, or data engineering role. The FDE will work directly with customers to understand complex and often ambiguous operational problems, translate them into technical solutions, and then build and deploy those solutions hands‑on.

You will operate at the intersection of customers, data, software engineering, and Generative AI. One engagement might require building an API integration and ETL pipeline; another might involve creating an AI agent that automates an operational workflow; another could require rapidly prototyping a customer‑specific application using LLMs and enterprise data. We are looking for someone who is comfortable moving between a customer conversation, architecture whiteboard, IDE, data pipeline, and production deployment.

What We're Looking For

• Strong hands‑on software engineering experience.
• Strong data engineering fundamentals, including ETL/ELT, data modeling, schema mapping, and data pipelines.
• Experience designing and integrating REST APIs and backend services.
• Strong Python development skills.
• Hands‑on experience building applications using LLMs / Generative AI.
• Experience building at least some of: AI agents, RAG systems, tool‑calling workflows, LLM‑powered applications, or AI workflow automation.
• Ability to take an ambiguous customer requirement and independently turn it into a working technical solution.
• Strong debugging and problem‑solving skills across applications, APIs, infrastructure, and data.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work directly with customers and senior stakeholders.
• Ability to operate effectively in fast‑moving environments with incomplete requirements.
• Based in or willing to work from the Washington, DC metro area.
• Ability to work in a hybrid environment with office/customer‑site presence at least 2 3 days per week.

• Experience working as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Solutions Architect, Technical Consultant, or customer‑facing Software/Data Engineer.
• Experience supporting the federal government, defense, intelligence, national security, or other mission‑critical environments.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with modern data platforms and technologies such as Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, or equivalent technologies.
• Experience with vector databases, embeddings, retrieval systems, and modern LLM application frameworks.
• Experience deploying AI applications into production environments.
• Experience designing human‑in‑the‑loop workflows and AI evaluation systems.
• Familiarity with enterprise security, authentication, authorization, and data‑governance requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to develop reusable technical approaches and influence engineering or product strategy.

• Work directly with customers to understand business objectives, operational workflows, technical environments, and pain points.
• Translate ambiguous customer requirements into concrete technical architectures and working solutions.
• Rapidly prototype, build, test, deploy, and iterate on customer‑facing solutions.
• Own technical delivery from initial discovery through implementation and production adoption.
• Make pragmatic engineering…