Forward Deployed Engineer

MACHINE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES LLC; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

MACHINE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES LLC is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer in Austin, TX. This hands-on technical leadership role bridges the offshore development team and internal stakeholders, translating high-level architecture into actionable work while ensuring code quality and API compliance.

The candidate will spend about half the time writing code and half the time driving technical ownership, offshore coordination, and delivery.

Qualifications

• Proven hands-on Python backend experience with FastAPI or Flask.
• Strong REST API design and async programming skills.
• Experience leading or coordinating offshore engineering teams.
• Familiarity with OpenAPI 3.0 specifications and contract-first APIs.

Responsibilities

• Translate architectural decisions into detailed specs for offshore teams.
• Lead technical ownership for the team’s design, implementation, and production readiness.
• Review offshore work to ensure Charter coding standards and CI/CD requirements.
• Coordinate sprint ceremonies and maintain effective communication across time zones.
• Drive incident response and post-release improvement efforts.

Skills

Backend Python

FastAPI/Flask

Async programming

REST API design

OpenAPI 3.0

Technical leadership

Tools

Pydantic

CI/CD

OpenAPI 3.0

Job description

Job Description

Job Overview

Job ID: J53656

Job Title: Forward Deployed Engineer

Location: Austin, TX

Duration: 12 Months + Extension

Domain Exposure: Manufacturing

Work Authorization: US Citizen, Green Card, OPT-EAD, CPT, H-1B, H4-EAD, L2-EAD, GC-EAD

Client: To Be Discussed Later

Employment Type: W-2, 1099, C2C

This Lead Developer serves as the technical bridge between our Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) and the offshore development team. The role translates high-level architectural direction and product requirements into actionable, well-scoped work for offshore delivery, while maintaining code quality, architectural compliance, and alignment with Charter engineering standards.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, aligned to the Charter Software Engineering Team Lead model. Roughly half the time is spent contributing code directly; the rest is spent on technical ownership, delivery coordination, and enabling the offshore team. The lead leads through technical context and influence, not formal management authority.

The core of this role is a strong hands-on technical engineer with real leadership experience. The two things that matter most are (1) demonstrated technical leadership of a development team and (2) deep backend Python skills (FastAPI/Flask, async, Pydantic, REST API design).

Key Responsibilities

Offshore Liaison

• Translate FDE-defined architectural decisions, designs, and product requirements into detailed technical specifications and user stories consumable by the offshore development team
• Serve as the primary escalation point for offshore developers encountering technical blockers
• Participate in sprint ceremonies (planning, daily standups, reviews) with the offshore team, bridging time zone gaps with asynchronous documentation and recorded walkthroughs
• Coordinate with the FDE on priorities, scope changes, and technical direction; relay context and decisions to the offshore team

Technical Ownership

• Own day-to-day technical decisions for the team's area: implementation approach, internal design, refactoring, and production support strategy
• Apply architectural standards in practice; push back when direction does not fit real-world constraints
• Represent the team in architecture and cross-team technical conversations
• Set expectations for code review, testing, documentation, and production readiness
• Conduct code reviews for all offshore-produced work, ensuring compliance with Charter coding standards, constraints, and CI/CD pipeline requirements
• Maintain and enforce adherence to contract-first API design (OpenAPI 3.0+ specs authored before implementation)
• Keep technical debt visible and advocate for engineering time to address it
• Lead the technical response to incidents - debugging, root cause analysis, and durable fixes
• Own operational health for the team's area: monitoring, alerting, on-call health, and runbooks
• Drive release readiness and track post-release outcomes with the Product Owner and customers

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, citizenship/ immigration status, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.