Customer-facing Forward Deployed Engineer who architects, implements, and optimizes agentic AI proofs-of-concept and enterprise deployments. Leads solution design, agent orchestration, platform development, performance optimization, and cross‑functional delivery while mentoring distributed technical teams and ensuring production-ready MLOps, FinOps, and security/compliance practices.
Job Title: Agentic AI FDE
Location: USA
Experience: 12+ years
Employment Type: Full-time
Travel requirements: 80% travel required, travel to PHTN.ai client offices
Job Summary:
The Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) will be a critical bridge between the product development team and the enterprise customers. This role requires a unique blend of deep technical expertise in AI, cloud deployments, and exceptional communication skills to deliver successful outcomes for complex, agentic AI solutions. The FDE will be responsible for customer-facing engagements, demonstrating the power of the platform, and leading proof-of-concept initiatives, while also managing diverse technical teams.
Key Responsibilities:
- Solution Design: Presenting the platform's capabilities, understanding customer requirements, architecting solutions, and guiding successful deployments in diverse enterprise environments.
- Deliverables: Delivering Agentic AI Proof-of-Concepts
- Deployments: Customer-Facing Platform & Deployment Expertise.
- Customer Interaction: Lead and execute technical POCs for agentic AI solutions, showcasing the value and potential of the platform. This involves collaborating closely with customer stakeholders to define success criteria, designing and implementing bespoke agent configurations, and demonstrating quantifiable business impact
- Agent Orchestration: Architect agent orchestration solutions aligned with customer requirements, ensuring timely implementation and delivery.
- Platform Development: Develop resilient, scalable, and high-performance platforms and tools to support product evolution and seamless production deployment.
- Collaboration: Manage and mentor both offshore and onshore technical personnel involved in deployments, integrations, and POCs. Foster a collaborative environment, ensure consistent technical standards, and drive efficient project execution across geographically dispersed teams.
- Performance Optimization: Optimize the platform and infrastructure for performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.
- Best Practices: Establish and enforce best practices for code quality, model versioning, experimentation tracking, and FinOps, TechOps, MLOps, AIOps, for Agentic AI.
- Mentorship & Guidance: Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior AI engineers and researchers.
- Innovation & Research: Stay abreast of the latest advancements in AI research and actively explore new techniques and tools to enhance our capabilities.
- Documentation: Create comprehensive technical documentation for architectures, models, and processes.
Required Skills:
- Strong AI/ML Acumen: Deep understanding of AI/ML concepts, methodologies, and frameworks. Experience with agentic AI, LLMs, machine learning pipelines, and model deployment strategies is highly desirable.
- Cloud Deployment Expertise: Extensive hands-on experience with any of the major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), including infrastructure-as-code, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), serverless architectures, and managed AI/ML services.
- Customer Engagement & Communication: Exceptional verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. Proven ability to build strong customer relationships and drive successful outcomes.
- Problem-Solving & Adaptability: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to troubleshoot complex technical issues in real-time. Comfortable working in fast-paced, dynamic environments with evolving customer needs.
- Project Management Fundamentals: Ability to manage multiple projects concurrently, prioritize tasks, and deliver results within agreed-upon timelines.
- Relevant Experience: [Specify desired years of experience, e.g., 5+ years] in a customer-facing technical role, such as Solutions Architect, or Forward Deployed Engineer, with a focus on Agentic AI or complex software deployments.
Qualifications
- Engineering Expertise
- 10+ years in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, or applied ML engineering.
- Strong proficiency in Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, or other backend languages.
- Deep understanding of Agent development and agent orchestration techniques
- Hands on experience in Lang chain, Lang watch, MCP, Vertex AI, Open AI
- Experience deploying systems on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) using Kubernetes and serverless frameworks.
- Deep understanding of API design, distributed systems, and data engineering workflows.
- DevOps & Infrastructure
- Strong background in CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (Terraform, Helm, Ansible).
- Skilled in setting up monitoring, observability, and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog).
- Familiarity with performance profiling, scaling strategies, and SRE principles.
- Security & Compliance Awareness
- Knowledge of enterprise SaaS security models (SSO, RBAC, encryption, API security).
- Experience working in environments subject to compliance frameworks (SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR).
- Soft Skills
- Excellent debugging and problem-solving in high-pressure deployment environments.
- Strong communication with technical stakeholders (engineering teams, architects, CTOs).
- Comfort working in fast-moving, ambiguous situations with minimal guidance.
Compensation, Benefits and Duration
Minimum Compensation: USD 80,000
Maximum Compensation: USD 280,000
Compensation is based on actual experience and qualifications of the candidate. The above is a reasonable and a good faith estimate for the role.
Medical, vision, and dental benefits, 401k retirement plan, variable pay/incentives, paid time off, and paid holidays are available for full time employees.
This position is not available for independent contractors
No applications will be considered if received more than 120 days after the date of this post.
Photon San Francisco, California, USA Office
San Francisco, United States
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