AI Forward Deployed Engineer

AristoTalent; United States; On-site; USD 90,000 - 172,000; Full time

Job summary

AristoTalent is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer at the intersection of AI, engineering, and client delivery. You’ll work directly with business and technical teams to understand workflows, define AI opportunities, and convert them into production solutions.

You’ll build with AI and communicate effectively with stakeholders, turning ambiguous problems into concrete requirements, designs, and delivery plans, while mentoring teammates and advancing engineering practices across the team.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of relevant professional experience in software engineering, AI engineering, technical product management, solutions engineering, or a related technical role.
• 1+ year of hands-on experience building or deploying AI solutions, or direct experience working as a Forward Deployed Engineer.
• Strong applied AI experience across LLMs, RAG, NLP, agents, evaluation, forecasting, or optimization.
• Experience building software or AI systems that have been deployed and used in production.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and experience working within collaborative development environments.
• Ability to take a loosely defined problem, figure out what needs to be built, and drive it through delivery.
• Strong communication skills with clients, business users, technical teams, and senior leaders.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts, constraints, and tradeoffs clearly to nontechnical audiences.
• Strong commercial judgment and understanding of how technical work translates into business value.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with client and business teams to understand their workflows, challenges, and opportunities for AI.
• Turn ambiguous business problems into technical requirements, solution designs, and delivery plans.
• Build and deploy applied AI solutions using technologies such as LLMs, RAG, NLP, agents, evaluation frameworks, forecasting, and optimization.
• Develop production integrations, data connectors, tool calling workflows, MCP servers, and internal AI platforms.
• Own solutions from early experimentation through production deployment.
• Build with strong software engineering practices, including testing, code reviews, experimentation, monitoring, and evaluation.
• Work across technical teams, business users, and senior leaders to communicate requirements, tradeoffs, risks, and limitations.
• Identify reusable technical patterns and share requirements and learnings with platform and engineering teams.
• Connect technical decisions to measurable business outcomes.
• Mentor teammates and help strengthen engineering and applied AI practices across the broader team.

Job description

We're looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to work at the intersection of AI, engineering, and client delivery. You'll work directly with business and technical teams to understand how they operate, identify where AI can have the biggest impact, and turn those opportunities into production solutions.

This is a hands on role for someone who is equally comfortable building with AI and sitting with stakeholders to work through an ambiguous problem. You might come from software or AI engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or technical product management. What matters most is that you've built real solutions and can communicate effectively with the people using them.

What You'll Do

• Work directly with client and business teams to understand their workflows, challenges, and opportunities for AI.
• Turn ambiguous business problems into technical requirements, solution designs, and delivery plans.
• Build and deploy applied AI solutions using technologies such as LLMs, RAG, NLP, agents, evaluation frameworks, forecasting, and optimization.
• Develop production integrations, data connectors, tool calling workflows, MCP servers, and internal AI platforms.
• Own solutions from early experimentation through production deployment.
• Build with strong software engineering practices, including testing, code reviews, experimentation, monitoring, and evaluation.
• Work across technical teams, business users, and senior leaders to communicate requirements, tradeoffs, risks, and limitations.
• Identify reusable technical patterns and share requirements and learnings with platform and engineering teams.
• Connect technical decisions to measurable business outcomes.
• Mentor teammates and help strengthen engineering and applied AI practices across the broader team.

What We're Looking For

• 3+ years of relevant professional experience in software engineering, AI engineering, technical product management, solutions engineering, technical consulting, or a related technical role.
• 1+ year of hands-on experience building or deploying AI solutions, or direct experience working as a Forward Deployed Engineer.
• Strong applied AI experience across areas such as LLMs, RAG, NLP, agents, evaluation, forecasting, or optimization.
• Experience building software or AI systems that have been deployed and used in production.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and experience working within collaborative development environments.
• Ability to take a loosely defined problem, figure out what needs to be built, and drive it through delivery.
• Strong communication skills and comfort working directly with clients, business users, technical teams, and senior leaders.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts, constraints, and tradeoffs clearly to nontechnical audiences.
• Strong commercial judgment and an understanding of how technical work translates into business value.

Nice to Have

• Experience in consulting, a fast moving startup, or another client-facing delivery environment.
• Background as an AI Product Manager, Software Engineer, AI or ML Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Technical Consultant.
• Experience with integrations, data connectors, tool calling, MCP, AI evaluation or monitoring, and internal AI platforms.
• Experience mentoring engineers or helping establish technical best practices.
• Experience in energy, commodities, trading, financial services, or another operationally complex industry.

Compensation

The expected pay range for this position is $65 to $125 per hour, depending on leveling. Actual compensation will depend on experience, skills, qualifications, and other job related factors.

We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees and do not discriminate on the basis of any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

• Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified applicants with disabilities throughout the application and interview process.