Senior Principal Forward Deployed Engineer (Customer Engineering)

About the Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) for AI Gateway, you are a hands-on developer and systems architect who embeds with customer engineering teams. You write production code, design low-latency topologies, and build custom plugins to ship secure enterprise AI workloads to production. You bridge the gap between customer production environments and core engineering—extending the platform edge while directly contributing code back to the core AI Gateway engine.

Responsibilities

• Write production-grade code (Python, Go, TypeScript) to integrate AI Gateway with microservices, API meshes, and multi-cloud architectures.
• Build custom middleware/plugins for identity-aware policies, prompt security, dynamic routing, and telemetry pipelines.
• Develop automated deployment modules (Terraform, Helm, Kubernetes) and SDK wrappers.
• Optimize high-throughput, low-latency traffic paths (streaming payloads, caching, load balancing).
• Lead Architectural Design Reviews (ADRs) with customer Principal Engineers and CISOs for zero-trust deployments.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years writing production code (Python, Go, TypeScript/C++), with deep experience in APIs (gRPC, REST, WebSockets) and API gateways (Envoy, Kong).
• Hands-on experience with LLM orchestration, prompt security, token optimization, model routing, and vector databases/RAG architectures.
• Proficiency in Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, AWS/GCP/Azure, OIDC/OAuth2, and zero-trust networking.

Preferred Qualifications

• A hands-on builder who loves pair-programming with customer devs and digging into raw code/traces to solve live outages.
• Experience thinking like an engineer first and a consultant second.
• Proven ability to own problems end-to-end.
• Ability to whiteboard enterprise architecture, debug an API integration, review code, and influence the product roadmap.

Pay

$183,600.00 - $297,000.00/yr

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be within the provided range. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found at the provided link.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes