Forward Deployed AI Engineer

dept; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

DEPT is seeking a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to embed within growth and strategy teams, turning FCJ methodology into working AI components, prototypes, and internal tools.

You will work across global client projects, collaborating with product and craft teams to ensure compatibility and hand over validated components, while staying focused on practical, shipped solutions rather than pure architecture.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience prototyping and shipping software in modern backend languages (Python, TypeScript, Go, or similar).
• Experience building applications across the main LLM model families (Gemini, GPT, Claude).
• Proficiency with APIs to connect services, authentication, data exchange, and integration across platforms.
• Experience developing agentic systems with orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or equivalent.
• AI-native way of working: AI tooling is the default across coding, research, and delivery.

Responsibilities

• Work with FCJ core team on global growth strategy, converting methodology into working agentic components, prototypes, and internal tools.
• Collaborate with growth and strategy teams to understand problems and deliver prototype-grade solutions.
• Handle globally distributed client projects on a partially billable basis, ensuring FCJ strategy is captured and implemented across markets.
• Document integration paths, maintain platform compatibility, and hand over validated components with product/craft teams.
• Evaluate, adopt, and integrate new AI products; maintain an AI-native toolchain and share best practices across markets.

Skills

Backend prototyping

LLM applications

API integration

Agentic systems

AI-native tooling

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

Job description

Forward Deployed AI Engineer

About the job

DEPT® is a Growth Invention company built to help the world's most ambitious brands grow faster. Operating at the intersection of technology and marketing, our 4,000+ specialists deliver growth invention services across Brand & Media, Experience, Commerce, CRM, and Technology & Data. We're 50|50 tech and marketing, partner-led, and first to move. Clients include Google, Lufthansa, Meta, eBay, and OpenAI. We have been certified B Corp and Climate Neutral since 2021.

Global AI Strategy & Solutions defines how DEPT®'s clients respond as AI agents become the primary layer between customers and brands. The Future of the Customer Journey (FCJ) is the team's flagship offer: it maps how AI systems intermediate customer journeys, diagnoses where a brand's product reality diverges from what AI systems say about it, and directs investment accordingly. Growth and strategy teams across markets are selling and delivering it now.

As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer, you are an embedded builder inside that motion. You will sit with growth and strategy teams, understand the problem in front of them, and answer with working software rather than documentation. You will convert FCJ methodology into agentic components, prototypes, and internal tools, and integrate with infrastructure that lets new prototypes appear in days. When needed, you will work across global client projects on a partially billable basis, making sure the firm-wide strategy is captured and implemented properly rather than reinvented market by market. As components mature, you will collaborate with product and craft teams to keep everything compatible with the long‑term platform and hand over cleanly.

You will be given broad problem statements to help collaborate and solve, not specific product ideas and features to create. We are not looking for someone to lead on devops or CI/CD, this is about having great ideas that are sensitive to our clients' real challenges, and shipping prototypes and strategic tools rapidly.

Your most important collaboration is with the FCJ core team on the global growth strategy: deciding what gets built next, for which market, to unlock which engagement. The toolchain will keep changing underneath you, new models, new vendor products, new technology‑partner platforms, and that is the point. This role suits an engineer who learns by shipping and treats every new AI product as something to master in the field.

Responsibilities

• Work with the FCJ core team on the global growth strategy, converting methodology into working agentic components, prototypes, and internal tools.
• Collaborate closely with growth and strategy teams to understand their problems and provide working solutions at prototype pace.
• Work across global client projects on a partially billable basis, ensuring the firm‑wide FCJ strategy is captured and implemented consistently across markets.
• Collaborate with product and craft teams where necessary to document integration paths, maintain platform compatibility, and hand over validated components.
• Work with technology partners to evaluate, adopt, and integrate new AI products; maintain an AI‑native toolchain and share what works across markets.

Minimum qualifications

• 5+ years of experience prototyping and shipping software in any modern backend language (Python, TypeScript, Go, or similar), with the ability to leverage AI tooling to spin up prototype frontends and APIs quickly.
• Experience building applications across the mainstream LLM model families (Gemini, GPT, Claude), connecting models to enterprise data and tools using patterns such as retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) and skills‑based agent systems.
• Proficiency in working with APIs to connect different services, authentication, data exchange, and integration across platforms.
• Experience developing agentic systems with orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or equivalent.
• AI‑native way of working: AI tooling is the default across coding, research, and delivery, with comfort spanning the tools in use across different markets.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in a forward‑deployed, customer engineering, solutions engineering, or applied AI role within an agency, consultancy, or AI company.
• Experience presenting working software to non‑technical stakeholders, including strategists and clients, and iterating live on their feedback.
• Knowledge of emerging integration standards such as OpenAPI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting agents to business systems.
• Knowledge of any of the following: paid media, social platforms, user behaviour, agentic commerce, or generative engine optimisation (GEO).
• Experience with evaluation, tracing, and observability for LLM applications.
• Demonstrated learning mindset: a record of adopting new AI products from technology partners quickly, learning by doing rather than waiting for training.