Forward-Deployed AI Systems Engineer

Knak Digital; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Knak Digital in Washington, DC seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to advance applied AI in high-assurance, mission-critical environments. The role covers model experimentation, infrastructure, and deployment with forward-deployed government partners.

You will build agentic AI systems, design multi-agent LLM applications, and own end-to-end lifecycle tasks from discovery to deployment in secure settings.

Qualifications

• Strong Python engineer with end-to-end ownership experience.
• Experience with LLMs and agentic systems.
• Built or maintained data pipelines and ML infrastructure.
• Familiar with RL workflows or simulation environments.
• Comfortable in high-security, high-reliability environments.
• Able to operate independently in partner-facing settings.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy agentic AI systems that support high-impact U.S. Government missions from prototype to production.
• Design and integrate LLM applications, including multi-agent systems, tool-using agents, RAG workflows, and human-in-the-loop autonomy.
• Work directly with government partners in forward-deployed environments to translate mission needs into technical systems.
• Build and maintain large-scale data curation and evaluation pipelines for model training and improvement.
• Develop infrastructure for model inference, experimentation, evaluation, and deployment across frontier AI platforms.
• Build AI systems that turn mission data, models, and tools into real operational autonomy.
• Own systems across the full lifecycle, including discovery, architecture, implementation, deployment, reliability, security, and iteration.

Skills

Python

LLMs & agentic systems

Data pipelines & ML infra

RL workflows / simulation

High-security environments

Job description

Knak Digital in Washington, DC seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to advance applied AI in high-assurance, mission-critical environments. The role covers model experimentation, infrastructure, and deployment with forward-deployed government partners.

You will build agentic AI systems, design multi-agent LLM applications, and own end-to-end lifecycle tasks from discovery to deployment in secure settings.