Forward Deployed Engineer

Reforge Recruitment & Consultancy; Washington (District of Columbia, MD); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Unknown AI Company is seeking a forward deployed engineer to build agentic AI systems for government missions. You will work on LLM applications, multi-agent frameworks, tool-calling agents, and RAG pipelines embedded with government partners.

The role spans applied AI research and production systems, with on-site work at secure facilities and sponsorship for security clearance. Applicants must be based in the DC area or relocate quickly.

Qualifications

• 1-4 years of production engineering with real shipping ownership.
• Strong Python, and hands-on experience with LLMs and agents (RAG, tool calling, multi-agent, context management).
• Fundamentals first, not a vibe coder, with a track record in data pipelines and ML infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Agentic AI systems for high-stakes government missions, from proof of concept to production.
• LLM applications, including multi-agent frameworks, tool-calling agents, RAG pipelines and human-in-the-loop workflows.
• Data curation and evaluation pipelines for model training and iteration.
• Infrastructure for inference, experimentation, evaluation and deployment.

Skills

Python

LLMs

Agents

Data pipelines

Tools

Tool-calling

Multi-agent systems

RAG pipelines

Job description

Our client is an AI company helping government agencies find and stop improper spending. Its agentic platform pulls together public and restricted government data, reasons across it and surfaces specific cases with the evidence chain auditors need to act. The team has already uncovered significant, previously unidentified issues across several agencies and is in active conversations with federal, defense, homeland security and state-level partners. The main constraint on growth is engineering headcount.

About the role:

You’ll join the first cohort of forward deployed engineers, a Member of Technical Staff role that spans applied AI research and production systems, embedded with government partners. There are two teams of roughly equal size. One works with defense and homeland security, with regular on-site days at a secure government facility and a security clearance that is sponsored. The other works with federal health agencies and state and local governments.

What you’ll own:

• Agentic AI systems for high-stakes government missions, from proof of concept to production
• LLM applications, including multi-agent frameworks, tool-calling agents, RAG pipelines and human-in-the-loop workflows
• Data curation and evaluation pipelines for model training and iteration
• Infrastructure for inference, experimentation, evaluation and deployment

What you’ll bring:

• 1-4 years of production engineering with real shipping ownership
• Strong Python, and deep hands-on experience with LLMs and agents (RAG, tool calling, multi-agent, context management)
• Fundamentals first, not a vibe coder, with a track record in data pipelines and ML infrastructure
• Excellent verbal communication, able to represent the company with partners
• An ex-founder or founding-engineer mindset: collaborative and low ego
• Based in the Washington, DC area or willing to relocate quickly, in person five days a week

Background that stands out:

• Ex-founder or founding engineer of a company that grew or exited
• Forward-deployed or federal work at defense-tech and AI companies
• Applied engineering at leading AI companies
• An active security clearance
• Prior fraud or healthcare-fraud analytics work

The details:

In the office in Washington, DC, five days a week, full-time. US citizens only. Applicants must be based in the DC area or able to relocate quickly.