Forward Deployed Engineer

TrekFed; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

TrekFed is forming a dedicated pod focused on AI business process agentification. As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll embed with government and DIB customers, turning processes into agentic systems and documenting patterns for the pod’s growth.

You’ll operate in a multi-level pod with design decisions and playbooks shared across engagements, while mentoring peers and owning technical roadmaps in customer environments.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering GenAI/LLM or agentic solutions in production environments.
• Ability to transform manual business processes into automated, agent-driven workflows.
• Experience in government, defense, or highly regulated environments.
• Strong communication with engineers and leadership across roles.
• Willingness to travel 25–50% and obtain government security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Embed on site or with a named customer, acting as day-to-day extension of their team.
• Turn a customer process end-to-end into a redesigned, agent-driven solution.
• Design, build, and ship AI/agentic solutions on AWS to meet deadlines.
• Coordinate with pod teammates to leverage shared patterns and playbooks.
• Translate business problems into concrete technical solutions quickly.
• Operate within governance and security constraints (CMMC, FedRAMP, ITAR/EAR).
• Document design decisions and reusable domain patterns for reuse.
• Identify new agentification opportunities and feed back to TrekFed and AWS teams.
• Build technical relationships with customer engineers and leadership.
• Partner with TrekFed leadership and AWS teams to align roadmaps.

Skills

GenAI/LLM delivery

AWS experience

Data integration

Governance & security

Production code delivery

Government/defense domain

Clear communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field

Tools

AWS

Job description

TrekFed is building a dedicated pod focused on AI business process agentification, taking manual, judgment heavy business processes and turning them into governed, production grade agentic systems. As a Forward Deployed Engineer on this pod, you will be embedded directly with one or more of our government and DIB customers, working side by side with their engineering, security, and programming teams. Your job is to turn a customer's process and platform investment into real, running agentic systems, not proposals. You are equal parts hands on builder, trusted technical advisor, and force multiplier for the AWS account team and TrekFed's own growth in the account.

You will work as part of a named, consistent pod rather than rotating across unrelated projects. The pod trains and operates together, builds a shared set of patterns and playbooks, and grows more autonomous as it earns trust on real engagements. No single FDE is expected to master every discipline the pod needs. The pod succeeds by combining engineers with different depth across a shared set of technical areas, and every FDE is expected to document design decisions and reusable patterns as they work, so the pod gets faster and more consistent over time.

Levels

TrekFed hires FDEs at three levels, based on breadth of technical competency rather than years of experience alone.

FDE I

You bring deep, hands on strength to one or two of the technical areas the pod needs and can operate independently within your area on a live customer engagement.

FDE II

You bring strong hands-on capability across three or more of the pod's technical areas and Forwcan flex across a customer engagement as the work demands rather than staying in a single lane.

FDE III (Tech Lead)

You bring credible depth across all of the pod's technical areas. You lead the pod's technical approach on an engagement, make the call on architecture and tradeoffs, mentor FDE I and II engineers, and own the pod's shared patterns and playbooks.

Responsibilities

• Embed on site or in a dedicated virtual capacity with a named customer account, becoming a day-to-day extension of their engineering team.
• Take a customer's existing business process end to end, from how it works today to a redesigned, agent driven version, including the data, integration, and validation work needed to make it trustworthy in production.
• Design, build, and ship AI/agentic solutions on AWS against real customer workloads and deadlines.
• Work within your area or areas of technical strength while coordinating with pod teammates whose strengths cover the rest of the engagement.
• Translate customer mission and business problems into concrete technical solutions, moving from whiteboard to working software quickly.
• Operate within the customer's governance, security, and compliance constraints, including CMMC, FedRAMP, ITAR/EAR, and classified or controlled environment requirements where applicable.
• Document design decisions, architecture, and domain patterns as reusable assets, so the pod's collective knowledge compounds across engagements.
• Identify and scope additional business process agentification opportunities within the account and feed them back to TrekFed and AWS account teams.
• Build a technical relationship of record with the customer's engineers and technical leadership, so TrekFed is the natural next call when new needs surface.
• Partner closely with TrekFed leadership and the covering AWS partner development and account teams to keep the account's technical roadmap and TrekFed's pipeline in sync.

Requirements

• Deep, hands-on experience in at least one core technical area relevant to agentic AI delivery on AWS (examples include data and systems integration, model and agent orchestration, domain data modeling, agent evaluation and operations, or governance and security). FDE II and III candidates bring this depth across multiple areas.
• Direct experience building and deploying GenAI/LLM or agentic solutions in a live customer or production environment, not just POCs.
• Experience turning a manual or semi-manual business process into an automated or agent driven workflow, including the data modeling, extraction, and validation work that goes with it.
• Comfort working independently inside a customer's environment and culture, with the judgment to know when to build, when to advise, and when to escape.
• Comfort operating as part of a small, closely coordinated pod, sharing patterns and lessons learned rather than working in isolation.
• A track record of writing production quality, well documented code, not just prototypes that die after the demo.
• Experience in or clear affinity for government, defense, or other highly regulated environments. You understand why moving fast looks different when compliance and mission risk are on the line.
• Strong communication skills with both engineers and program and customer leadership. You can hold a room of skeptical government engineers and earn their trust.
• For FDE III: a track record leading technical delivery, setting architecture direction, and mentoring other engineers.
• AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or AI/ML Specialty) a plus, but real-world delivery experience matters more than the badge.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Data Science, or related technical field.
• Travel 25-50% depending on customer location and engagement.
• Ability to obtain and maintain government security clearance.