Title of Role: Forward Deployed Engineer
Location: San Francisco, CA
Company Stage of Funding: Early-Stage Venture
Office Type: Onsite (5 Days a Week)
Salary: Highly Competitive (Industry-Leading Salary + Equity)
We are working with a cutting-edge, venture-backed startup at the intersection of artificial intelligence and government technology. This stealth-mode company is redefining how government contracting is done by integrating general-purpose intelligence into high-stakes, mission-critical workflows.
With backing from major defense and government contractors and a leadership team composed of veterans from organizations like Anduril, Amazon, Robinhood, Google, and the Department of Defense, the company is already securing significant global contracts and operating in a space with immense national and international relevance.
This is an exceptional opportunity to get in at the ground floor of a transformative venture in a $1T+ market with virtually no technical incumbents.
Challenges
We are harnessing the transformative power of Generative AI and autonomous technology to revolutionize the way things are done, breaking away from old methods to significantly improve efficiency, security, and creativity in all kinds of government-related initiatives.
Handling Sensitive Data: Dealing with highly confidential information from critical government contracting firms.
Pushing AI Frontiers: Solving problems that surpass the scope of current AI benchmarks in the government context.
Uncharted Territory: Addressing unique challenges in natural language processing and optimizing AI models for specific government contracting functions, while ensuring secure and compliant data handling.
As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer, you'll be a hands-on AI leader working shoulder-to-shoulder with customers. You will own implementation, and deployment of end-to-end AI-powered products. Your work will go beyond prototypes—you will ship production-grade systems that help reshape how government and defense ecosystems operate.
You’ll act like a startup CTO within our customer engagements: identifying real-world problems, architecting full-stack AI solutions, and working across product, infrastructure, and operations to deliver.
Minimum Qualifications
6+ years of engineering experience with proficiency in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar languages.
Deep understanding of the GenAI landscape, including experience with LLMs (e.g., RAG, prompt engineering, fine-tuning).
Strong foundation in Machine Learning principles: training, evaluation, and system design.
Experience building real-world applications that process and reason over large, complex datasets.
Proficiency with front-end frameworks such as React.
Strong systems thinking and the ability to work across infrastructure, AI, and UI layers.
U.S. Citizen eligible for Secret security clearance.
Preferred Qualifications
Background in Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or related technical field.
Experience with physical systems, motion planning, or multi-agent autonomy.
Familiarity with behavior trees, modeling and simulation (M&S), and safety-critical software.
Understanding of distributed communication systems and real-time architectures.
Experience working with or for defense or intelligence communities; familiarity with military operational concepts.
Compensation: $180-220k base + equity
Benefits:
Full health benefits
Unlimited PTO
This role offers the opportunity to not only push the boundaries of generative AI, but also to contribute meaningfully to national innovation and security. If you're an ambitious ML engineer ready to shape the future of autonomous government technology, we'd love to hear from you.