Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer, Federal

About the role

The Senior Applied Engineer will embed directly with our most strategic federal accounts to lead complex deployments of Deepgram's Voice AI platform in production environments where mission performance matters, delivery is urgent, and ambiguity is the default.

Responsibilities

• Own the full technical lifecycle of federal engagements, from initial discovery and proof-of-concept through production deployment and ongoing optimization.
• Map customer problems, structure delivery, and ship solutions fast.
• Identify reusable patterns, codify best practices, and share field signals that influence Deepgram's product roadmap.
• Serve as the trusted technical thought partner for federal stakeholders, guiding adoption, maximizing operational value, and ensuring successful deployments at scale.
• Work with a high degree of autonomy in customer environments that often have unique infrastructure constraints, compliance requirements, and security considerations.

Requirements

• Active Top Secret/SCI (TS/SCI) security clearance, or equivalent.
• 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience, ideally in customer-facing or government environments.
• Strong software engineering background with professional development experience in at least one modern programming language, such as Python, JavaScript, or similar.
• Proven ability to scope and deliver complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous contexts.
• Experience building and deploying production systems in government or similarly constrained environments.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to translate technical concepts for both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including senior government leadership.
• Navigate complex sales or procurement cycles in the federal space.

Qualifications

• Track record of navigating complex sales or procurement cycles in the federal space.
• Experience with speech recognition, NLP, AI/Voice agents, or related AI technologies.
• Familiarity with cloud deployment models (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, etc.), Kubernetes, Terraform, and related infrastructure.
• Experience building or deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models, with an understanding of how model behavior affects product experience.
• Knowledge of FedRAMP, FISMA, or other government compliance frameworks.
• Experience with API-first products and developer tools.
• Experience developing automation solutions, self-service tools, and technical documentation for customer enablement.