Forward Deployed Engineer (Principal)

Role overview A technology talent network is hiring a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to lead its most complex and strategically important applied AI deployments. The role spans executive advisory, product strategy, architecture, and hands-on engineering, framing customer problems, defining production paths, and resolving the hardest technical constraints. The engineer will shape how enterprises use an AI agent harness and software engineering orchestration platform to deploy governed AI across software delivery and critical operations.

Responsibilities - Lead executive and technical discovery for complex enterprise programmes, identifying where applied AI can create measurable operational value - Define the target architecture, deployment strategy, governance model, and technical success measures for multi-team AI programmes - Design and, when necessary, build the highest-risk components across agents, models, data, integrations, infrastructure, and security - Set standards for context, tool authority, permissions, evaluations, guardrails, and observability within the AI agent harness - Coordinate delivery through the orchestration platform across customer teams, internal engineers, AI agents, and technology partners - Guide model and vendor selection while preserving customer control over data, infrastructure, performance, and cost - Review architectures, unblock critical incidents, and make decisions where reliability, security, or regulated-industry requirements are material - Develop reusable deployment patterns, reference architectures, and engineering practices that improve outcomes across customers - Mentor senior engineers and act as a trusted technical counterpart to CTOs, CIOs, and heads of engineering - Partner with product leaders to turn field insight into platform and AI agent harness improvements

Requirements - Ten or more years of professional software engineering experience with a track record of leading complex production programmes - Deep expertise in distributed systems, data platforms, cloud architecture, or machine learning systems, combined with strong hands-on coding ability - Demonstrated experience taking AI, machine learning, or data-intensive products from ambiguous requirements into reliable production use - Expert knowledge of system architecture, APIs, security, observability, and data governance - Hands-on experience designing and implementing agentic AI systems and deployment patterns - Proven ability to operate across executive, architectural, and hands-on engineering levels - Experience mentoring senior engineers and engaging with C-level technical stakeholders

Benefits and work setup - Remote role based in Lagos, Nigeria, with travel to customer or company offices when deployments require it - Collaboration primarily during UK, European, and West African business hours - Access to strategically significant regional and international enterprise deployments - Equal opportunity employer with reasonable accommodations available during the application and interview process