Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

8200 Accenture Australia P/L Company; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

18 weeks paid parental leave

Career development program

Flexible work arrangements

Diversity & Inclusion initiatives

WORK180 endorsed employer

Job summary

Accenture is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with enterprise clients, designing and shipping AI systems end-to-end from discovery to production. You will choose among Claude, GPT, Gemini and other tools to meet enterprise needs, ensuring security, scalability and reliability in real-world environments.

You will mentor engineers, shape internal practices, and lead technical engagements across cloud platforms and data environments, aligning with client roadmaps and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 10+ years of software engineering, solutions architecture, or technical consulting
• 3+ years delivering AI/ML or LLM-based solutions in production
• Proven track record of leading complex, customer-facing technical engagements

Responsibilities

• Strategic Client Leadership with C-suite engagement and long-term roadmap influence
• Solution Design & Delivery of enterprise-grade AI systems with appropriate tooling
• Technical Leadership setting direction, mentoring engineers, and leading incidents
• Governance & Operational Excellence with MLOps, monitoring, and compliance

Skills

Production code

Distributed systems

API design

LLM platforms

Claude

GPT

Gemini

Cloud platforms

Data integrations

Observability

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s in CS/Engineering

Tools

Claude

GPT

Gemini

LangSmith

Promptfoo

Weights & Biases

AWS

Azure

GCP

Snowflake

Job description

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading solutions and services company that helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed across the enterprise, bringing together the talent of our approximately 786,000 people, our proprietary assets and platforms, and deep ecosystem relationships. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. Through our Reinvention Services we bring together our capabilities across strategy, consulting, technology, operations, Song and Industry X with our deep industry expertise to create and deliver solutions and services for our clients. Our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and we measure our success by the 360° value we create for all our stakeholders. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

What you’ll do

The most interesting engineering problems right now aren't just inside big tech companies, they're inside enterprises trying to figure out how AI actually fits into the way they work. As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work directly with enterprise clients to change how their organisations operate by designing and shipping AI systems that deliver real outcomes. You'll own delivery end-to-end, from the first whiteboard session with a CTO to a production system handling real load. You'll work across the best available tooling (Claude, GPT, Gemini etc.) choosing what's right for the problem rather than defaulting to one stack. You'll design pipelines and agentic workflows that have to meet enterprise standards for security, scale, and reliability. You'll do this while mentoring engineers, shaping our internal practices, and becoming the kind of trusted advisor that clients build their AI roadmaps around. This role suits someone who is equally at home in a technical deep-dive and a boardroom. Someone who finds half-solved problems energising. Someone who wants their work to be visible, consequential, and fast-moving.

Key responsibilities

• Strategic Client Leadership Own the technical relationship with enterprise clients from initial discovery through to production, including C-suite engagement and long-term roadmap influence. Run workshops that identify and prioritise high-value AI use cases, translating business problems into concrete engineering plans.
• Solution Design & Delivery Architect and ship enterprise-grade AI systems using the best available tooling (Claude, GPT, Gemini etc.) chosen for the problem, not the default. Design pipelines and agentic workflows that meet real enterprise requirements: security, scalability, cost efficiency, and reliability at production load. Integrate LLMs with complex enterprise data environments, including cloud platforms and data warehouses.
• Technical Leadership Set the technical direction on engagements, making the hard calls on architecture, tooling, and trade-offs. Mentor engineers on both sides of the client relationship, raising the standard of the whole team. Lead incident resolution and complex troubleshooting.
• Governance & Operational Excellence Define evaluation frameworks that assess model quality, safety, and business impact. Implement LLMOps practices including monitoring, observability, and drift detection in production environments. Ensure every deployment meets enterprise security and compliance requirements from day one.

Here’s what you need

Education & Experience:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions architecture, or technical consulting
• 3+ years delivering AI/ML or LLM-based solutions in production
• Proven track record of leading complex, customer-facing technical engagements

Technical Skills

• Programming & Engineering You write production-quality code and have strong opinions about what that means. You're expert-level in at least one language and comfortable picking up others as the problem demands. You understand distributed systems and API design deeply enough to spot architectural risk early, and you've lived through enough incidents to know why observability and CI/CD hygiene matter.
• LLM & AI Platforms You have hands‑on experience with Claude, GPT, and Gemini in production, not just demos. You understand the real trade‑offs between models: cost, latency, context limits, reasoning quality, and where each breaks down. You know prompt engineering beyond the basics, have built RAG pipelines that handle messy real-world data, and have worked with agentic frameworks and MCP. Vector database selection and chunking strategy aren't abstract concepts to you.
• Cloud & Data Technologies You're strong on at least one major cloud platform (e.g. AWS, Azure, or GCP) and you understand how enterprise infrastructure constraints shape what you can actually deploy. You've worked with containerisation and orchestration in production environments, not just local Docker setups.
• Data Platforms You're comfortable working across the data stack, whether that's Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, or something bespoke. You know enough to integrate LLMs with complex data environments without needing a data engineer to translate for you.

Bonus points

• Experience deploying AI solutions in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, or government
• Familiarity with responsible AI and model risk management frameworks
• Contributions to open-source projects or technical publications
• Experience with evaluation and observability tools such as LangSmith, Promptfoo, or Weights & Biases
• Prior experience in a startup or high-growth technology environment

Benefits of working at Accenture

• 18 weeks paid parental leave
• Long & short-term career break opportunities
• Structured career development program
• Local and international career opportunities.
• Certified as a Family Inclusive Workplace™
• Flexible Work Arrangements - centered around Accenture’s Truly Human ethos and our commitment to supporting the health and wellbeing of our people.
• We are proud to be in the top 3 of last year’s Diversity & Inclusion Index! We are a WORK180 Endorsed Employer, to see our benefits and policies click here.

Equal Employment Opportunity

At Accenture, we recognise that our people are multi-dimensional, and we create a work environment where all people feel like they can bring their authentic selves to work, every day. Our unwavering commitment to inclusion and diversity unleashes innovation and creates a culture where everyone feels they have equal opportunity. Our range of progressive policies support flexibility in ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ our people work to ensure that Accenture is an organisation where you can strive for more, achieve great things and maintain the balance and wellbeing you need. We encourage applications from all people, and we are committed to removing barriers to the recruitment process and employee lifecycle. All employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, disability status, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, religion or sexual orientation and we do not tolerate discrimination. If you require adjustments to the recruitment process or have a preferred communication method, please email [e-mail] and cite the relevant Job Number, or contact us on [phone]. To ensure our workplace is inclusive and diverse we are setting bold goals and taking comprehensive action. To achieve these goals, we collect information that allows us to track the effectiveness of our Inclusion and Diversity programs. Learn how Accenture protects your personal data and know your rights in relation to your personal data. Read more about our Privacy Statement.

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent‑and innovation‑led company with approximately 791,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement for Australia

At Accenture, our intention is to foster a culture and a workplace in which all of our people feel a sense of belonging and are respected and empowered to do their best work. As part of our talent strategy, we hire and develop people who have different backgrounds, different perspectives and different lived experiences. These differences ensure that we have and attract the cognitive diversity to deliver a variety of perspectives, observations and insights which are essential to drive the innovation needed to reinvent, and we hold our leaders accountable for ensuring we have the most innovative and talented people in our industry. We encourage applications from all people, and we are committed to removing barriers to the recruitment process and employee lifecycle. All employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, disability status, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, religion or sexual orientation and we do not tolerate discrimination. If you require adjustments to the recruitment process or have a preferred communication method, please email [e-mail] and cite the relevant Job Number, or contact us on [phone]. Learn how Accenture protects your personal data and know your rights in relation to your personal data. Read more about our Privacy Statement.

Bring your incredible skills and join our global team of innovators.

We come together from different backgrounds across the world and work with the latest technologies to create value and growth for our clients. With us, you’ll continue to learn and grow so you can advance in your career. Your personal dreams and ambitions are just as important to us; that’s why we offer support any way we can—when you thrive, we all thrive. Explore your next step at Accenture Belong. Grow. Thrive. Join a great place to work for reinventors who drive meaningful change for our clients, communities, and the world. Wo rld. Explore your next step at Accenture