$152,900 to $210,155 a year to parachute into customer sites and build GenAI applications that actually make it to production.
Databricks' AI Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineering role is worth a look if you've already shipped RAG pipelines and multi-agent systems in production and want to do that for a rotating cast of customers instead of one company.
The AI Forward Deployed Engineering team is Databricks' customer-facing AI specialists, the people who turn a customer's first-of-its-kind AI idea into something that actually runs in production.
🛠️ What you'd actually build:
• Cutting-edge GenAI solutions for customers, pulling in the latest techniques straight from Databricks' own AI research
• Production rollouts of consumer and internal GenAI applications, not just proofs of concept
• Technical advisory relationships across a range of customer domains, acting as the trusted voice in the room
• Conference talks and internal thought leadership, shaping how Databricks' product and engineering teams prioritize what's next
🎯 Who should pay attention?
• People with extensive, hands-on industry experience building and deploying production-grade GenAI applications, this one explicitly isn't for new grads or entry-level
• Engineers who've used RAG, multi-agent systems, Text2SQL or fine-tuning with tools like HuggingFace, LangChain or DSPy
• Anyone who has deployed production ML on AWS, Azure or GCP and can talk through the evaluation and optimization that got it there
• A g…
Building production AI systems and comfortable working directly with government customers?
OpenAI is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer for its Government team, with listed compensation of $145,800–$280,000.
📍 Washington DC, Seattle or San Francisco
🏢 Hybrid: 3 days in the office per week
✈️ Up to 50% travel, including customer site visits
📦 Relocation assistance offered
One detail to check upfront: the posting lists active TS/SCI clearance or equivalent.
Here’s what the role involves 👇
🛠️ What you’d actually build
• Full-stack applications powered by OpenAI models for government and public sector customers.
• Production deployments that you own from the first prototype through stable operation.
• Observable systems spanning infrastructure, backend and frontend.
• Reusable tools and playbooks that help other teams deploy successfully.
You’d work directly with defense, intelligence and federal stakeholders to understand their problems, scope delivery and ship systems with measurable mission impact.
🎯 Who should pay attention?
• Engineers with 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience.
• Strong Python or JavaScript developers who can work across the stack.
• Builders familiar with Azure/AWS, Kubernetes and Terraform.
• People who understand how LLM behaviour affects reliability and the user experience.
• Engineers who can explain trade-offs clearly, manage ambiguity and keep multiple projects moving.
What stands out to me: the ownership.
You’re expe…
$135,000 to $200,000 a year, plus RSUs and a sign-on bonus, to deploy AI-powered decision systems directly inside US government agencies, and you'll need an active Top Secret clearance to do it.
Palantir's Forward Deployed Software Engineer, US Government role is worth a look if you already hold a security clearance and want to build software that goes straight into real government operations, not a staging environment.
Forward Deployed Software Engineers sit with the customer, turning a vague question like "why are we losing customers" or a government mission problem into a working, deployed solution on Palantir's platforms.
🛠️ What you'd actually build:
• End-to-end solutions on top of Palantir's core products, from high-level system design and prototyping through to application development and data integration
• Custom applications layered on Palantir's platform, using Postgres, Cassandra, Hadoop and Spark for the data side
• Back-end tools in Java and Groovy, front-end work in TypeScript, React and d3, and data processing in Python
• Rapid iteration cycles built on constant feedback from the customers and colleagues you work with directly on site
🎯 Who should pay attention?
• People with a strong engineering background in Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering or Physics
• Strong coders in Python, Java, C++ or TypeScript who are comfortable in a rapidly changing environment with dynamic objectives
• Anyone who already holds an active US Security Cleara…
