Forward Deployed Engineer

At Twelve Labs, we are pioneering the development of cutting-edge multimodal foundation models that have the ability to comprehend videos just like humans do. Our models have redefined the standards in video-language modeling, empowering us with more intuitive and far-reaching capabilities, and fundamentally transforming the way we interact with and analyze various forms of media.

With a remarkable $107 million in Seed and Series A funding, our company is backed by top-tier venture capital firms such as NVIDIA’s NVentures, NEA, Radical Ventures, and Index Ventures, and prominent AI visionaries and founders such as Fei-Fei Li, Silvio Savarese, Alexandr Wang and more. Headquartered in San Francisco, with an influential APAC presence in Seoul, our global footprint underscores our commitment to driving worldwide innovation.

We are a global company that values the uniqueness of each person’s journey. It is the differences in our cultural, educational, and life experiences that allow us to constantly challenge the status quo. We are looking for individuals who are motivated by our mission and eager to make an impact as we push the bounds of technology to transform the world. Join us as we revolutionize video understanding and multimodal AI.

*Clearance: Active U.S. Government security clearance required (Secret or Top Secret; TS/SCI strongly preferred)

As a Senior/Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll embed with U.S. public-sector customers to design, ship, and scale systems on top of TwelveLabs’ multimodal models. You’ll lead technical discovery, architecture, implementation, and production hardening—often in regulated or air-gapped environments—while turning field insights into crisp feedback that shapes our roadmap.

You will work hand-in-hand with our Science, Product, and Engineering (SPE) teams, acting as the connective tissue between customer missions and our core R&D. Your work will:

• Feed real-world usage patterns, edge cases, and domain-specific requirements directly to Science for model tuning and research direction.

• Translate complex mission needs into actionable Product requirements, influencing roadmap prioritization and feature design.

• Partner with Engineering to ensure new capabilities meet operational constraints in secure, large-scale environments.

• Own engagements end-to-end:

  • Discovery: Uncover and understand customer needs and outcomes

  • Solution Design: Design scalable, secure, and robust solutions based on customer discovery

  • Prototyping & Implementation: Map technical requirements to necessary changes or enhancements for TwelveLabs’ products and implement them

  • Production Deployments: Stand up production grade deployments often in air-gapped environments

• Deliver full stack video solutions: deliver video search/retrieval, Q&A, summarization, highlights/captioning, analytics, and more using TwelveLabs models.

• Operate in regulated contexts: partner with security/compliance teams, contribute to ATO packages, and meet customer controls and audit needs.

• Work with partners: Work with our partners across the public sector to deliver for our customers

• Travel onsite: Visit customer locations regularly both pre and post deployment/implementation

• Deep SPE collaboration: run joint design reviews, co-own POC experiments, and influence API/method updates for video embeddings, video-language outputs, and retrieval features.

• 8+ years in customer-facing engineering (FDE, Solutions/Field/Partner Engineering, or SA)

• 5+ years experience working with customers in the U.S. public sector with a track record of taking prototypes to production.

• Experience deploying complex, scalable products in secure and air gapped environments

• Expert Python skills

• LLM/multimodal app patterns: embeddings, RAG/orchestration, tool/function calling, prompt engineering/versioning, offline/online evals, caching/latency control, guardrails.

• Cloud & deployment: deep experience with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform/IaC;

• Security & compliance literacy: SSO/OIDC/SAML, KMS/secret management, data isolation/residency, auditable logging/monitoring, etc.

• Strong frontend skills TypeScript/JavaScript etc.

• Experience with GPU accelerated deployments

• Experiences handling video (you know what ffmpeg is)

🤝 An open and inclusive culture and work environment.

🧑‍💻 Work closely with a collaborative, mission-driven team on cutting-edge AI technology.

🦷 Full health, dental, and vision benefits

✈️ Extremely flexible PTO and parental leave policy. Office closed the week of Christmas and New Years.

🛂 VISA support (such as H1B and OPT transfer for US employees)