Forward Deployed AI Engineer

sardine; United States; Remote; CAD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous cash & equity compensation

Remote-first culture

MacBook Pro delivered to your door

Home office setup stipend

Meal stipend

Social stipend

Health, dental and vision insurance (U

RRSP/401k matching (US/Canada)

Job summary

Sardine is seeking a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to bridge state-of-the-art AI capabilities with clients’ fraud and AML challenges. You will embed directly with customers, understand their pain points, scope requirements, and deliver tailored AI solutions.

You will architect, train, and deploy AI agents in production, combining data science rigor with client-facing strategy to drive measurable business value.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in Data Science or Applied AI.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL for data manipulation and modeling.
• Able to translate ambiguous client challenges into concrete requirements and deliver the final product.
• Own the end-to-end solution lifecycle with strong client-facing acumen.

Responsibilities

• Embed with clients to gather requirements and translate them into concrete AI architectures.
• Train and deploy custom AI agents to prevent fraud and automate complex workflows.
• Utilize prompt engineering and evaluation frameworks to optimize AI performance.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to scale models into production.
• Establish AI risk metrics and supporting data pipelines.

Skills

Data Science

Python

SQL

End-to-end ownership

Autonomy

Job description

Who we are:

Sardine is the leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime. Our integrated solution unifies data across risk teams to help organizations stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Sardine's platform is strengthened by one of the fastest-growing fraud consortiums in the market, spanning more than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide. Leading companies including FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com rely on Sardine to secure and grow trust in their products.

Our culture:

• We have hubs in the Bay Area, NYC, Austin, Toronto, and São Paulo. However, we maintain a remote-first work culture. #WorkFromAnywhere
• We hire talented, self-motivated individuals with extreme ownership and high growth orientation.
• We value performance and not hours worked. We believe you shouldn't have to miss your family dinner, your kid's school play, friends get-together, or doctor's appointments for the sake of adhering to an arbitrary work schedule.

Location:

• Remote - United States or Canada
• From Home / Beach / Mountain / Cafe / Anywhere!
• We are a remote-first company with a globally distributed team. You can find your productive zone and work from there.

About the role:

As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer at Sardine, you will act as the crucial bridge between our state-of-the-art AI capabilities and our clients' most complex fraud, compliance, and complex workflow challenges. You will operate with high levels of ownership, embedding directly with our clients to understand their unique operational pain points, scope the requirements, and then roll up your sleeves to build the solution.

You will not just be analyzing data; you will be architecting, training, and deploying custom AI agents and intelligent workflows into production environments. This role demands the technical rigor of a seasoned data scientist and the strategic, client-facing acumen to drive a project from conception to deployment. If you thrive at the intersection of client consulting, advanced machine learning, and hands-on engineering, this is the role for you.

What you'll be doing:

• Embed directly with clients to gather requirements, translating ambiguous operational challenges into concrete technical architectures and delivering high-impact, AI-driven solutions with extreme ownership.
• Train and deploy custom AI agents to prevent fraud and automate complex fincrime workflows across a diverse portfolio of use cases.
• Utilize advanced prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and rigorous evaluation frameworks to continuously optimize AI agent performance, ensuring high accuracy, safety, and reliability.
• Champion an AI-first approach across internal teams and client engagements, demonstrating the tangible business impact of advanced machine learning interventions.
• Establish and evolve our AI risk metrics, the supporting datasets, and the evaluation pipelines used to measure the causal impact of deployed agents.
• Collaborate tightly with internal engineering and product teams to scale custom models into production, ensuring seamless integration and optimized operational performance.

What you'll need:

• 5+ years of experience in Data Science or Applied AI
• Proficiency in Python and SQL for complex data manipulation, pipeline building, and model integration.
• A creative, critical thinker with a "get-things-done" mentality, who thrives autonomously and is obsessed with delivering measurable business value.
• Exceptional ability to own the end-to-end solution lifecycle, including the ability to comfortably translate ambiguous client challenges into concrete requirements and deliver the final product.

Benefits we offer:

• Generous compensation in cash and equity
• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested
• Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture
• Flexible paid time off and Year-end break
• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents - US and Canada specific
• 4% matching in 401k / RRSP - US and Canada specific
• MacBook Pro delivered to your door
• One-time stipend to set up a home office - desk, chair, screen, etc.
• Monthly meal stipend
• Monthly social meet-up stipend
• Annual health and wellness stipend
• Annual Learning stipend

Join a fast-growing company with world-class professionals from around the world. If you are seeking a meaningful career, you found the right place, and we would love to hear from you.

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