Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Xebia; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 300,000 - 520,000; Full time

Job summary

Xebia is seeking a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to join in Abu Dhabi. The role emphasizes hands-on development of enterprise-grade agentic AI applications in aviation, with direct collaboration with stakeholders to define problems, design solutions, and take them to production.

Ideal candidates have ~3 years in production software with GenAI/LLMs, plus ~1 year in agentic AI, strong MCP integration skills, and a business-first mindset. Growth into senior leadership within squads is available.

Qualifications

• Hands-on core-level engineer with GenAI and agentic-AI depth.
• Fluent English; capable in a diverse international team.
• 3+ years building production-grade software with GenAI/LLMs, incl. ~1 year agentic AI.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, deploy and continuously improve enterprise-grade agentic AI applications for aviation scenarios.
• Build agents that reason across steps, call tools and APIs, manage context, handle exceptions and human-in-the-loop.
• Design and implement RAG pipelines over enterprise knowledge: ingestion, chunking, embeddings, vector search, retrieval tuning.
• Connect agents to backend systems via REST/OpenAPI, webhooks and event-driven patterns with secure auth.
• Apply structured LLM patterns end to end: tool calling, schema validation, retries, fallbacks and guardrails.
• Own quality from day one: testing, observability, logging, versioning and feedback loops.
• Apply security, privacy, access control, auditability, governance across deployments.
• Take single-threaded ownership of a domain outcome and promote reusable patterns.

Skills

GenAI & LLMs

Agentic AI

Python

TypeScript/JavaScript

REST/OpenAPI

CI/CD

Testing & Logging

Security & Governance

Cloud & Containers

MCP integration

Vector DBs

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/SE/DS/AI

Tools

LangGraph

Semantic Kernel

CrewAI

AutoGen

OpenAI Agents SDK

Microsoft Foundry

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore

Google Vertex/Gemini

pgvector

OpenSearch

Job description

Hi,

#Xebia is looking for Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Location- Abu Dhabi

Exp- 4+ years

Purpose

Xebia is building in-house AI expertise to deliver AI in aviation. We build, we do not buy off the shelf. As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer you are the core of a Squad, you sit with stakeholders to understand the problem and the why, then design, build, deploy and run the agentic AI systems that solve it, end to end. This is a hands-on, build-first role with single-threaded ownership of a real aviation outcome, working alongside a Business Product Owner and an AI Value Architect, on a shared platform (paved road, MCP fabric, standards) that lets your squad self-serve against systems.

Accountabilities & Responsibilities:

Understand before you build. Start every problem with the business need and the why, working directly with stakeholders, then take the solution from discovery to production.

• Design, build, deploy and continuously improve enterprise-grade agentic AI applications for real aviation scenarios, using agentic coding as your default way of working.
• Build agents that reason across steps, call tools and APIs, manage context, handle exceptions and support human-in-the-loop, reliably and at enterprise scale.
• Design and implement RAG pipelines over enterprise knowledge: ingestion, chunking, embeddings, vector search, retrieval tuning, grounding and source traceability.
• Build MCP-based integrations and connect agents to backend systems via REST/OpenAPI, webhooks and event-driven patterns with secure authentication, and expose your own work as clean, reusable, self-serviceable interfaces.
• Apply structured LLM patterns end to end: tool calling, schema-validated outputs, retries, fallbacks and guardrails.
• Own quality from day one: testing, evaluation, observability, logging, versioning and feedback loops for reliability, accuracy, latency, security and cost.
• Apply security, privacy, access control, auditability, responsible-AI and governance across every deployment.
• Take single-threaded ownership of a domain outcome (one owner, one result), and help establish reusable patterns that grow internal AI capability rather than renting it.
• Coordinate with your Business Product Owner, AI Value Architect and other squads; speak up when AI is not the right tool.

Education & Experience:

We look for a hands-on Core-level engineer who combines a business-first mindset with real agentic-AI engineering depth:

• Curiosity above all: you dig into problems, question assumptions and want to understand how the airline actually works.
• A business-first, human-centric mindset: aviation is made for humans, by humans, and AI supports people, it does not replace them. Fluent English, comfortable in a culturally diverse, international team.
• Around 3 years building production-grade software with GenAI and LLMs, including about 1 year of hands-on agentic AI: applications that go beyond prompting or basic chatbots, with tool calling, workflow orchestration, RAG, context management, evaluation and monitoring.
• Hands-on experience or strong working knowledge of MCP for connecting agents to tools, systems, APIs and data.
• Strong Python, with basic knowledge of at least one of TypeScript / JavaScript, and modern engineering practice: async programming, FastAPI, Pydantic, Git and CI/CD, testing, error handling, and logging.
• Practical experience with at least one agent framework or enterprise AI platform (e.g. LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, CrewAI, AutoGen, OpenAI Agents SDK, Microsoft Foundry, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, Google Vertex/Gemini) and with a vector database or search platform (e.g. Azure AI Search, pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, OpenSearch).
• Experience integrating enterprise systems (APIs, managed identities, webhooks, queues, middleware), and deploying on cloud with containers.
• Strong assets: aviation or airline domain knowledge; a background in classical machine learning and data science; and classical full-stack development (interfaces, frontends, APIs, backend engineering).
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, AI/ML or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience; relevant cloud-AI, GenAI, agentic-AI or MLOps certifications are an advantage.

• Growth path: grow into Senior Forward Deployed AI Engineer and Technical Lead, and onward to AI Value Architect, owning a cluster’s value journey while still building.