Agentic Forward Deployed Engineer

Salt; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 96,000 - 126,000; Full time

Job summary

Salt is recruiting a Principal-level Agentic Forward Deployed Engineer to support a major AI-enabled digital transformation programme within a large international organisation. The role blends hands-on engineering with establishing standards, governance, security controls and cost observability for agentic AI at scale.

The position is a 6–12 month hybrid contract with on-site work in the UK and an outside IR35 assessment.

Qualifications

• Senior engineering experience at principal or staff level in enterprise environments.
• Proven track record building, securing and operating production agentic AI systems.
• Experience implementing agentic AI in large-scale production environments.
• Hands-on software engineering capability across AI-enabled workflows.
• Strong understanding of LLMs, agentic architectures and guardrails.
• Experience leading engineering standards, governance and organisational controls.

Responsibilities

• Establish engineering standards and best practices for enterprise agentic development.
• Define and implement coding-agent workflows, repository integration and code review practices.
• Work hands-on with engineering teams adopting agent-assisted software development.
• Develop reusable approaches, patterns and reference implementations for agentic engineering.
• Build exemplars of agentic services and AI-enabled product capabilities.
• Establish governance frameworks covering agent behaviour, oversight and security controls.

Skills

Principal-level engineering

Hands-on software engineering

LLM evaluation & guardrails

AI security & governance

Stakeholder management

Agentic AI workflows

Job description

Agentic Forward Deployed Engineer Rate: £600 per day - Outside IR35 Contract: 6-12 months Working Pattern: Hybrid - 3 days per week on-site Industry: Public Sector - International Education

We are recruiting a Principal-level Agentic Forward Deployed Engineer to support a major AI-enabled digital transformation programme within a large international organisation. The organisation is adopting an agentic-first approach to software engineering and wants to move from individual experimentation towards a scalable, secure and maintainable enterprise model for AI-assisted development. Experienced engineering teams are already exploring agentic development. This role will establish what good looks like across the wider organisation, introducing the engineering standards, governance, security controls, evaluation frameworks, operating models and knowledge-sharing practices required to deploy agentic AI at scale. This is not a purely strategic or governance-focused role. The successful candidate must remain a credible hands‑on engineer who can both define standards and actively help teams implement them.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish engineering standards and best practices for enterprise agentic development
• Define and implement coding-agent workflows, repository integration and appropriate code review practices
• Work hands‑on with engineering teams adopting agent-assisted software development
• Develop reusable approaches, patterns and reference implementations for agentic engineering
• Build exemplars of agentic services, AI‑enabled product capabilities and coding‑agent workflows
• Establish governance frameworks covering agent behaviour, oversight, auditability and organisational controls
• Define appropriate security controls for agentic systems
• Review agentic system designs for security, permissions, data boundaries and operational risk
• Establish appropriate approaches to prompt injection and other AI‑specific threats
• Introduce appropriate secrets management and API key protection
• Address risks associated with data leakage, credential exposure and secret exfiltration
• Implement AI evaluation frameworks, red‑teaming approaches and appropriate guardrails
• Establish safeguarding controls where AI‑enabled services may interact with younger or potentially vulnerable users
• Introduce monitoring, budgeting and reporting around AI model usage and inference costs
• Develop approaches to AI cost observability and cost management
• Establish standards around maintainability, monitoring and operational support
• Work with engineering teams on prompts, context, configuration, tools, APIs, integrations and workflows
• Contribute directly to coding and implementation where required
• Work collaboratively with architecture, engineering, governance and security teams
• Coach engineering teams in the adoption of effective agent‑assisted development practices
• Deliver structured knowledge transfer and upskilling
• Establish sustainable internal ownership so key practices remain embedded beyond the engagement

Essential Skills and Experience

• Principal, Staff or equivalent‑level engineering experience
• Proven experience building, securing and operating production agentic AI systems
• Evidence of implementing agentic AI within a genuine enterprise or large‑scale production environment
• Experience extending AI adoption beyond individual proof‑of‑concept or personal experimentation
• Strong hands‑on software engineering capability
• Experience implementing AI‑enabled engineering workflows
• Strong understanding of large language models and agentic architectures
• Experience with LLM evaluation, testing, red‑teaming and guardrail design
• Strong understanding of AI security risks and appropriate mitigation strategies
• Experience introducing engineering standards, governance or organisational controls around AI
• Experience operating within enterprise requirements covering security, data protection, compliance and governance
• Understanding of cost management associated with large‑scale AI usage
• Strong understanding of software architecture, maintainability and operational support
• Ability to evaluate architectural and engineering trade‑offs associated with AI‑assisted development
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills
• Ability to influence senior engineers, architects and technology leaders
• Experience establishing AI enablement, engineering or platform capability within an organisation

Relevant Technology Experience

Experience with one or more of the following would be particularly relevant:

• Anthropic Claude and the wider Claude ecosystem
• OpenAI and GPT‑based technologies
• AWS Bedrock
• Google Gemini and associated AI technologies
• Enterprise use of open‑source large language models
• Agentic development frameworks and tooling
• AI‑assisted software engineering environments
• Prompt and context engineering
• API‑driven AI integrations
• Webhooks and automated agent workflows

Candidate Profile

This is a senior, Principal‑level requirement and the organisation is particularly interested in candidates who have implemented agentic AI at meaningful enterprise scale. The organisation already has capable engineers experimenting with agentic development. This role requires someone who understands the wider picture: how these capabilities are governed, secured, evaluated, monitored, funded, maintained and scaled across an organisation.

Applicants must already have unrestricted right to work in the UK. Visa sponsorship is not available for this opportunity.

*Rates depend on experience and client requirements