Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

We're looking for a Staff Forward Deployed AI Engineer to lead the design, delivery, and adoption of AI/ML systems directly within client environments. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who thrives on architectural decisions, can own systems end-to-end, and drives real outcomes at the intersection of technical depth and client partnership.

Responsibilities

• Craft & Delivery: Lead the design and implementation of complex ML/AI systems end-to-end within client environments, owning architecture decisions and driving solutions from research through production at scale
• Build, deploy, and evolve scalable ML platforms, pipelines, and infrastructure that support reliable, repeatable model development and deployment — often within existing client constraints
• Diagnose and unblock integration challenges in live systems, adapting quickly to unfamiliar codebases, cloud environments, and organizational contexts
• Set the standard for AI-forward engineering, using tools like Claude and Cursor with sophistication and helping both our team and client teams adopt them effectively

Collaboration & Client Partnership

• Embed directly with client teams, earning trust quickly and translating their business problems into AI system designs that actually work in their environment
• Partner with product, engineering, and leadership — ours and the client's — to align technical direction with business outcomes
• Translate complex AI tradeoffs, risks, and opportunities into clear narratives for technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Lead design reviews and technical discussions, raising the bar for engineering rigor across both R&P and client teams

Leadership & Influence

• Define AI architecture and engineering standards for each engagement, bringing depth on tradeoffs, long-term implications, and responsible AI practices
• Drive client adoption of AI systems post-delivery — identifying gaps in understanding, building enablement materials, and upskilling client engineers where needed
• Mentor and grow junior and mid-level engineers, multiplying impact through coaching, code reviews, and pairing on hard problems
• Take ownership of the most ambiguous and highest-stakes pieces of work, driving them through to production with care for reliability, cost, and safety

Qualifications

• 7+ years professional software engineering experience, with 4+ years focused on AI/ML systems in production and deep hands-on experience with generative AI development
• Expert software engineering background (Python or similar) with strong design sensibilities for scalable, maintainable systems
• Deep expertise with cloud platforms, including in-depth understanding of AWS services and AWS GenAI offerings
• Proven track record designing and shipping complex agentic systems in production environments, including within client or enterprise constraints
• Mastery of AI frameworks and orchestration tools
• Strong experience with evaluation frameworks and observability tools for LLM apps, including building these capabilities where they don't yet exist
• Deep understanding of AI safety, responsible AI principles, prompt injection defenses, and PII handling
• Extensive experience building RAG pipelines: chunking strategies, embedding models, vector databases, and advanced retrieval techniques
• API design experience, including architecting and integrating with internal and third-party services at scale
• Advanced cost optimization expertise: token economics, caching strategies, model routing, quantization
• Strong working knowledge of Docker and Kubernetes for containerized deployments
• Demonstrable, day-to-day usage and expert knowledge of AI-forward coding tools such as Claude Code and Cursor
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-moving client environments — adapting quickly, communicating clearly, and earning trust at the engineering level

Pay

$176,612 - $243,680 CAD