Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, U.S. Government

Job Title: Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, U.S. Government

Job Type: Full-time

Location: Greater Washington DC area (onsite requirement 3-4x per week)

The Role

We’re hiring a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to lead the development and deployment of applied AI systems across research and production. This role spans model experimentation, infrastructure, and deployment in high-assurance, mission-critical environments, including forward-deployed work with strategic U.S. Government partners.

You’ll own complex technical initiatives, drive architectural decisions, and translate mission requirements into reliable, production-ready AI systems while providing technical leadership and ensuring mission success.

What You’ll Work On

• Lead the design and deployment of agentic AI systems supporting high-impact U.S. Government missions, from prototype to production.

• Architect and integrate LLM applications, including multi-agent systems, tool-using agents, RAG workflows, and human-in-the-loop autonomy.

• Serve as a senior technical partner to government stakeholders, translating mission needs into scalable, reliable systems.

• Lead the development of large-scale data curation and evaluation pipelines for model training and improvement.

• Design and scale infrastructure for model inference, experimentation, evaluation, and deployment across frontier AI platforms.

• Build AI systems that turn mission data, models, and tools into real operational autonomy.

• Own the full technical lifecycle, including architecture, implementation, deployment, reliability, security, and iteration.

• Drive technical decisions, resolve complex engineering challenges, and provide mentorship and guidance to other engineers.

What We're Looking For

• Extensive professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of owning and delivering complex, production-grade systems.

• Advanced Python engineering skills with demonstrated end-to-end technical ownership.

• Strong hands-on experience developing and deploying LLM applications and agentic AI systems.

• Experience designing and scaling data pipelines, ML infrastructure, and model evaluation systems.

• Familiarity with RL workflows, simulation environments, or model experimentation.

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives, make architectural decisions, and mentor engineers.

• Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, partner-facing environments with strong technical and operational accountability.

• Comfortable working in high-security, high-reliability, and mission-critical environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active U.S. security clearance or eligibility and willingness to obtain one.

• Experience supporting U.S. Government, defense, intelligence, or national security missions.

• Prior experience at a startup, defense organization, Department of War, or government-focused technology company.

• Experience leading technical initiatives and working directly with government stakeholders.

• Background operating in fast-moving startup environments, mission-critical government settings, or both.