AI Platform Engineer, Forward-Deployed (Hybrid)

IFS; England; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

IFS is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, Platform to embed with product teams and customer organisations, understanding real problems, designing real solutions, and owning the outcome. You will multiply developer velocity and platform adoption, working at the sharp end in code and building patterns and tooling that make platform adoption effortless.

This is a high-agency, hands-on senior role. You will collaborate with the Architecture team to shape the Internal Developer Platform and drive

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software development experience across the stack.
• Backend: Go; Frontend: React (Next.js); Messaging: Kafka/RedPanda; Data: PostgreSQL.
• Cloud-native: Kubernetes, containers, GitOps, IaC.
• Strong understanding of event-driven and distributed systems.
• Delivered production-grade systems with real-world debugging.
• Able to communicate with non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with platform or infrastructure teams and customer-facing work.

Responsibilities

• Embed directly with product teams and customer engineering organisations to maximise developer velocity and reduce GTM timelines.
• Lead technical discovery, identify the actual bottleneck, not the presenting symptom.
• Design and build production-grade solutions on the IFS Cloud platform: workflows, integrations, event-driven patterns, and data pipelines.
• Identify, diagnose, and resolve platform friction points preventing teams from shipping at speed.
• Champion and implement event-driven architecture patterns across product teams.
• Build tooling, patterns, and reference implementations that accelerate adoption of Kairos and Nexus.
• Ship a working first version fast, then harden it with monitoring and production-grade quality.
• Collaborate with NGA architecture team to drive Internal Developer Platform requirements.
• Translate product pain points into actionable platform feedback and roadmap input.
• Work with customer architects, IT leads, and business stakeholders, communicating trade-offs clearly.
• Be the connective tissue between IFS R&D and platform consumers.

Skills

5+ years

Go

React

Next.js

Kafka

RedPanda

PostgreSQL

Kubernetes

GitOps

IaC

Event-driven

Production systems

Communication

Tools

Kairos

Nexus

Job description

IFS is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer, Platform to embed with product teams and customer organisations, understanding real problems, designing real solutions, and owning the outcome. You will multiply developer velocity and platform adoption, working at the sharp end in code and building patterns and tooling that make platform adoption effortless.

This is a high-agency, hands-on senior role. You will collaborate with the Architecture team to shape the Internal Developer Platform and drive