Forward Deployed AI Engineer (Senior/Principal Level)

Cloudera; Town of Vernon (NY); Hybrid; USD 198,000 - 248,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous PTO

Flexible WFH

Wellness programs

Career development

Volunteer time

Employee resource groups

Job summary

Cloudera is seeking a Director for Forward Deployed Engineering in the US. You will embed with enterprise customers to prototype AI apps, shape architecture, and drive adoption of agentic AI at scale.

You will mentor teams, codify reference patterns, and collaborate with product, sales, and customers to translate needs into scalable AI solutions. Occasional travel up to 20% is expected.

Qualifications

• 7+ years building production systems with 2-4 years ML experience.
• Hands-on software/data engineering and full-stack AI/ML development.
• Experience with foundation models, RAG, and context engineering.

Responsibilities

• Build and prototype AI/ML apps on Cloudera platform.
• Advise customers on AI roadmaps and deployment.
• Codify reference architectures and starter kits.
• Mentor teams and share reusable tooling.
• Work with customers across technical and executive audiences; travel up to 20%.

Skills

Software engineering

Data engineering

Applied AI/ML

Full-stack ML apps

LLMOps

Customer engagement

Mentorship

Autonomy

Education

BSc/MSc/PhD

Tools

Spark

Iceberg

NiFi

NVIDIA GPUs

Job description

Job Description: At Cloudera, we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, we're the preferred data partner for the top companies in almost every industry. Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world's largest enterprises.

Business Area: Corp. Strategy

Seniority Level: Director

Job Description: At Cloudera, we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, we're the preferred data partner for the top companies in almost every industry. Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world's largest enterprises. Cloudera's Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) function sits within the Applied AI organization, and is a specialized AI/ML engineering team focused on accelerating AI adoption within our most strategic enterprise customers. We embed directly with customers to rapidly pilot AI use cases, solve real-world business challenges, and help operationalize advanced AI capabilities within enterprise environments. Cloudera FDEs operate at the intersection of customer engineering, AI innovation, and enterprise deployment - driving high-impact AI outcomes for customers and codifying solution patterns for repeatable delivery at scale.

About The Role

• Build & Prototype AI Apps - Develop full-stack AI/ML applications on Cloudera to demonstrate how AI and agentic systems solve real enterprise use cases
• Partner with Strategic Customers - Work directly with customer teams to drive AI and agentic use cases from early prototype toward production readiness
• Shape Enterprise AI Architecture - Advise customer leaders on AI roadmaps, solution design, deployment, and AI use cases
• Codify Solution Patterns - Standardize successful patterns into repeatable reference architectures, productized solutions, starter kits, and internal playbooks
• Multiply impact - Be a thought leader, mentor Cloudera teams, and contribute to resources that grow our AI capability. Channel field and customer signal back to Product teams to improve our AI platform and products

We are excited if you have:

• 7+ years of experience building and deploying production-grade systems, including 2-4 years experience building ML systems or GenAI/agentic applications
• Strong hands-on software engineering, data engineering, and applied AI/ML skills, with experience building full-stack ML applications or agentic systems using modern AI frameworks and tooling
• Experience with foundation models, context engineering, fine-tuning, semantic search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic workflows
• Deep understanding of LLMOps/MLOps practices including evaluation, observability, serving, monitoring, and lifecycle management
• Experience designing and implementing scalable AI solution architectures aligned to enterprise standards (security, governance, compliance, etc.)
• The ability to engage directly with customers, both technical and executive audiences - to translate needs into actionable technical strategy
• High agency with the ability to operate autonomously and thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving customer environments
• A collaborative mindset and passion for enabling others through mentorship, internal enablement, or reusable tooling
• Bsc/Msc/PhD in related field or equivalent experience
• This is a customer-facing role combining remote and in-person engagement. Occasional travel may be required for on-site customer engagement, industry events, and team meetings - up to 20% depending on business needs

You may also have:

• Experience with cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Experience using the Cloudera platform
• Experience with open source big data technologies like Spark, Iceberg, NiFi, etc
• Experience with AI infrastructure and runtime technologies including NVIDIA GPUs, inference optimization, model serving, or distributed AI workloads

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is:

New York & California: $198,000-$247,500

Individual compensation within the published range is determined by the candidate's skills, experience, qualifications, and primary work location. In addition to base pay, sales roles are eligible for Cloudera's commission plan, while non-sales roles are eligible for the corporate incentive plan. All employees receive a comprehensive benefits package.

This role is not eligible for immigration support or relocation.

This role is not eligible for immigration support or relocation.

What you can expect from us:

• Generous PTO Policy
• Support work life balance with Unplugged Days
• Flexible WFH Policy
• Mental & Physical Wellness programs
• Phone and Internet Reimbursement program
• Access to Continued Career Development
• Comprehensive Benefits and Competitive Packages
• Paid Volunteer Time
• Employee Resource Groups

EEO/VEVRAA