Forward Deployed Engineer – Data Engineering & GenAI
Job Title: Forward Deployed Engineer – Data Engineering & GenAI
Location: Washington, DC Metro Area – Hybrid
Local Candidates Only
Duration: 6 Months
Experience: 14+ Years
Work Authorization: US Citizens Only
Interview: Final round – Face-to-Face
Tax Terms: W2 / C2C
Job Description
We are seeking an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) with strong software engineering, data engineering, Generative AI, and customer-facing experience.
This is not a traditional implementation, solutions consulting, or data engineering role. The ideal candidate will work directly with customers to understand complex and ambiguous operational problems, translate requirements into technical solutions, and personally build and deploy those solutions.
The role sits at the intersection of software engineering, data, APIs, cloud, customers, and Generative AI.
Must-Have Requirements
14+ years of professional IT/software engineering experience.
Strong hands-on software engineering experience.
Strong data engineering fundamentals, including ETL/ELT, data modeling, schema mapping, and data pipelines.
Strong Python development skills.
Experience designing and integrating REST APIs and backend services.
Hands-on experience building applications using LLMs / Generative AI.
Experience with one or more of:
AI Agents
RAG systems
Tool/function calling
LLM-powered applications
AI workflow automation
Ability to take ambiguous customer requirements and independently turn them into working technical solutions.
Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across applications, APIs, infrastructure, and data.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Demonstrated experience working directly with customers and senior stakeholders.
Ability to work effectively in fast-moving environments with incomplete requirements.
Must be able to work hybrid in the Washington, DC Metro Area 2–3 days per week and support office/customer-site presence.
US Citizens Only.
Strongly Preferred
Previous experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Solutions Architect, Technical Consultant, or customer-facing Software/Data Engineer.
Federal government, defense, intelligence, national security, or other mission-critical environment experience.
AWS, Azure, or GCP experience.
Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, or equivalent modern data technologies.
Vector databases, embeddings, retrieval systems, and modern LLM frameworks.
Experience deploying AI applications into production.
Human-in-the-loop workflows and AI evaluation systems.
Enterprise security, authentication, authorization, and data-governance experience.
Experience developing reusable technical approaches and influencing engineering/product strategy.
Key Responsibilities
Work directly with customers to understand business objectives, workflows, technical environments, and pain points.
Translate ambiguous customer requirements into technical architectures and working solutions.
Rapidly prototype, build, test, deploy, and iterate on customer-facing solutions.
Own technical delivery from discovery through implementation and production adoption.
Design and develop APIs and backend services.
Integrate applications with databases, APIs, cloud services, AI models, and customer systems.
Build ETL/ELT pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and delivery.
Execute bulk data processing using formats such as Parquet, CSV, and JSON.
Build and maintain REST/API integrations.
Develop GenAI-powered applications that automate complex customer workflows.
Build LLM-based agents and agentic workflows across enterprise data, APIs, and tools.
Develop RAG pipelines connecting LLMs with structured and unstructured enterprise data.
Implement tool/function calling, structured outputs, workflow orchestration, and multi-step AI systems.
Build evaluation frameworks and feedback loops to improve AI application quality.
Apply production engineering practices including testing, version control, CI/CD, monitoring, security, and documentation.
Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate combines:
Software Engineering + Data Engineering + Python + GenAI/LLMs + APIs + Customer-Facing Delivery
Candidates should be able to move comfortably between a customer conversation, architecture whiteboard, IDE, data pipeline, and production deployment.
Only candidates who meet the core technical requirements and are local to the Washington, DC Metro Area should apply.