We are looking for a Staff Forward Deployed AI Engineer with 5-10 years of experience to serve as the technical backbone of our San Diego engineering team. This is a rare hybrid role for someone who can ship complex production AI systems and hold their own in a room with a skeptical CFO or CTO - a true unicorn who combines deep engineering craft with executive presence and a genuine passion for mentoring others.
What will you be doing?
Build and own end-to-end production AI systems across a diverse client portfolio - voice agents, RAG pipelines, LLM orchestration, Salesforce integrations, and more.
Join client calls alongside solutions leaders to translate complex technical builds to C-level stakeholders and keep engagements on track under pressure.
Mentor and coach the existing team of 3 FDEs - reviewing their client calls, spot-checking their work, and developing their technical and client-facing skills.
Act as a thought partner to the Head of Engineering - proactively surfacing better approaches, improving team systems and processes, and helping set the engineering bar.
Triage and delegate builds across the team, freeing up your time for the highest-complexity client problems while growing junior engineers through hands-on ownership.
- 5-10 years of experience as a forward-deployed or customer-facing software engineer
- Experience driving architecture decisions and building client-facing AI systems (e.g. agentic workflows, RAG pipelines, document processing, and automation running in production)
- Strong software engineering skills building end-to-end production systems
- 1+ years formally mentoring or managing engineers
- Experience building voice agents tied to measurable business outcomes
- Production cloud deployment (AWS, GCP, or Azure): deploying, monitoring, and maintaining live client-facing systems
- Experience in AI, especially with Claude, is a significant plus
- Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to handle pressure from C-level executives
- BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or STEM