Forward Deploy Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer – AI/ML Location: McLean, VA / Washington, D.C. Metro Area Work Arrangement: Hybrid, 4 days per week onsite with local travel to client sites Employment Type: Full-Time Compensation: $180,000–$230,000 base salary + competitive equity Experience: 4–6 years preferred Visa Sponsorship: Not available About the Role We are seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer with strong Software Engineering and AI/ML experience to architect, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems supporting high-impact U.S. Government missions. This is a highly technical, customer-facing engineering position. You will work directly with government partners to understand complex mission requirements and translate them into working AI-powered solutions. The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering fundamentals with hands-on experience building modern LLM, RAG, agentic AI, and machine learning systems. What You'll Do Architect, build, and deploy agentic AI systems for complex, high-stakes use cases Develop multi-agent workflows, RAG pipelines, and tool-calling agents Work directly with government stakeholders to understand mission requirements and translate them into technical solutions Build systems capable of analyzing large public and government datasets Develop data pipelines and infrastructure supporting production AI/ML applications Design reliable APIs, integrations, and backend services Take AI solutions from early prototype through production deployment Evaluate and improve LLM performance, retrieval quality, reliability, and system accuracy Work closely with a small engineering team in a fast-moving startup environment Travel locally throughout the Washington, D.C. area to federal agency and government client sites What We're Looking For Approximately 4–6 years of professional engineering experience Strong professional experience with Python Combination of Software Engineering and AI/ML experience Hands-on experience building applications using LLMs Production experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Experience with agentic AI, AI agents, or multi-agent frameworks Experience building production data pipelines Strong understanding of ML infrastructure and production deployment Ability to design and ship software independently Experience translating ambiguous customer requirements into working technical solutions Strong written and verbal communication skills Comfortable interacting directly with technical and non-technical stakeholders Ability to work onsite in McLean, VA four days per week Ability to travel locally to government client sites in the Washington, D.C. area Must be authorized to work in the United States without current or future visa sponsorship Preferred Experience Experience with several of the following is highly desirable: Python Large Language Models (LLMs) RAG LangChain / LangGraph or similar frameworks Multi-Agent Frameworks Tool Calling / Function Calling Vector Databases Data Pipelines Distributed Systems Reinforcement Learning ML Infrastructure Cloud Infrastructure Docker / Kubernetes APIs and Microservices AI evaluation and benchmarking Experience working with government agencies, defense organizations, regulated industries, or high-security environments is a plus. Active or previous U.S. Government security clearance is also a plus. Who Will Succeed in This Role You may be a great fit if you're the type of engineer who enjoys doing more than writing code. You like sitting with customers, understanding difficult problems, designing a solution, building it, deploying it, and seeing it used in the real world. You should be comfortable operating in an early-stage environment where engineers have significant ownership and where requirements may evolve as you learn more about the customer's mission. Pay: $180,000.00 - $230,000.00 per year Benefits: * 401(k) * Dental insurance * Flexible schedule * Retirement plan * Tuition reimbursement Experience: * Software Engineer: 5 years (Preferred) Security clearance: * Confidential (Preferred) Work Location: In person