Forward Deployed Agile Software Engineer (Washington, D.C.)

Role overview

Embed with client and internal teams to turn complex business needs into working software, from early discovery through production deployment. This hands-on engineering role spans AI-enabled products and the systems around them, combining client partnership with practical decisions about reliability, security, evaluation, and operations.

Responsibilities

- Discover client goals, workflows, data, technical environments, and constraints; turn ambiguous needs into requirements, architectures, prototypes, and delivery plans. - Build AI-enabled applications, APIs, data pipelines, developer tools, and full-stack products, integrating with enterprise systems and cloud services. - Design the supporting AI system, including agent workflows, tools, context, memory, permissions, orchestration, and human review controls. - Create evaluations and observability to measure quality, reliability, latency, cost, and task completion, and to diagnose failures. - Test prototypes with users and evolve successful approaches into secure, scalable production software. - Communicate risks and technical trade-offs, collaborate across disciplines, and contribute reusable engineering patterns and delivery practices.

Requirements

- Professional experience building and deploying production-quality software, ideally including AI-powered or agent-based systems. - Strong skills in Python, TypeScript, or another language used for AI applications and developer tools. - Practical understanding of the infrastructure, context, tools, permissions, controls, and feedback needed for reliable AI agents. - Familiarity with agent loops, graph-based orchestration or state machines, and multi-step workflows involving tools, data, and human approvals. - Experience evaluating and instrumenting AI systems to measure performance, trace behavior, and investigate failures. - Strong knowledge of APIs, distributed systems, databases, cloud infrastructure, and modern software development; able to work directly with clients and communicate clearly across technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice to have

The source highlights experience with model evaluation, regression testing, production monitoring, and responsible safeguards for autonomous or semi-autonomous systems. The role may also contribute to technical discovery, workshops, demonstrations, and pre-sales discussions.