Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, HLS

About the role

The Forward Deployed Engineer, Staff (FDE) is a high-impact technical leader responsible for translating the immense power of Talkdesk's Agentic AI platform into transformative, production-grade solutions for strategic enterprise customers. You are a unique blend of a highly experienced software engineer, a technical project lead, and a hands-on builder. You own the technical execution for deployments, mitigate technical risks, and drive successful customer outcomes across assigned projects. This role is for the experienced builder who excels in high-stakes, customer-facing environments and is passionate about defining the future of Customer Experience Automation.

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical lead for complex deployments. Design and implement the architectural blueprint for AI agent solutions, manage cross-system dependencies, and ensure designs meet stringent enterprise standards for security and scale.
• Write production-grade code and leverage Talkdesk and 3rd-party APIs/SDKs to design, build, test, and deploy AI agents. Drive the execution from prototype through to production deployment, ensuring technical quality.
• Serve as a trusted technical expert for our AI solutions. Confidently address deep technical inquiries, mitigate technical risk, and build trust with customer Engineering Directors and technical architects.
• Synthesize and codify deployment learnings into reusable solution patterns and tooling. Provide actionable feedback to core Product and Engineering teams to help inform future product direction.
• Mentor junior FDEs and technical specialists on best practices for complex AI architecture, production quality, and client-facing technical delivery.

Requirements

• Minimum of 6-10 years of progressive experience in software or solution engineering, with at least 1+ years focused on architecting and deploying AI/ML/Agentic solutions.
• Project implementation consulting experience in large-scale IT integration projects, ERP projects, or AI implementations, including client-side project lead experience.
• Strong experience in Agentic AI System Architecture: Proven experience in the design and end-to-end implementation of complex multi-agent systems, encompassing sophisticated planning, memory, and tool-use frameworks.
• Proficiency in JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, and other relevant languages with a focus on writing secure, scalable, and tested production code.
• Deep expertise in systems integration (APIs, webhooks, message queues) and data architecture to ensure secure, compliant, and performant data flow for the agent across complex customer environments.
• Strong proficiency in prompt engineering, model optimization, and designing systems where agents collaborate to achieve complex outcomes.
• Proven ability to build credibility and consensus with customer executives, lead technical discussions, and drive alignment across internal and external teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, including hands-on experience with vector databases.
• Experience with healthcare systems such as Epic or Aetna or retail services systems is a plus.
• Prior experience in the Contact Center (CCaaS), Unified Communications (UCaaS), or Customer Experience (CX) industry.