Client-First AI Engineer (Forward-Deployed)

hedgehog lab; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Hedgehog Lab is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead early client engagements and define architectural directions for live AI transformations. You will own technical design, prove concepts, and work directly with customer teams to solve their toughest challenges.

You operate at the intersection of technology and client relationships, shaping projects from day one and ensuring the delivered work aligns with business goals.

Qualifications

• Real experience using AI agents to build production software, not copy-pasting from ChatGPT.
• The ability to break down a complicated, poorly defined problem and ship something that works.
• Strong TypeScript or Python, comfortable across the full stack, with frameworks such as NestJS or FastAPI.
• Experience meeting and presenting to clients directly.
• Strong written communication, especially for ADRs and docs others rely on.
• Experience in consulting, professional services or a forward-deployed role.
• A pragmatic take on architecture, sized to POC, pilot or production.

Responsibilities

• Turn customer goals into a solution architecture and technology choices.
• Build proofs of concept that validate your design and hand off cleanly.
• Define the agentic engineering pipeline: tooling, workflows and guardrails for AI coding agents.
• Shape the quality strategy, including test approach and code review.
• Make other engineers more capable, pairing on real work and leaving patterns client teams can own.
• Own the architectural decision records.

Skills

AI agents

Client relations

Full-stack

Code reviews

ADR/docs

Communication

Problem solving

Tools

TypeScript

Python

NestJS

FastAPI

Job description

Hedgehog Lab is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead early client engagements and define architectural directions for live AI transformations. You will own technical design, prove concepts, and work directly with customer teams to solve their toughest challenges.

You operate at the intersection of technology and client relationships, shaping projects from day one and ensuring the delivered work aligns with business goals.