Forward Deployed Engineer, Agentic AI

PolyAI; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity participation

Flexible work from home

Healthcare

Dental cover

Parental leave

Home-working allowance

Annual learning allowance

25 days annual leave increasing with 6

Job summary

PolyAI is seeking an experienced engineer to build and operate customer-facing voice agents from discovery through launch and ongoing improvement. This hands-on role blends production LLM systems, real-time voice, and enterprise integrations, owning performance after release.

You will implement agents in production, integrate with customer systems via Python, and lead cross-functional discussions to address constraints, dependencies, and improvements in collaboration with product and research

Qualifications

• Experience building and shipping LLM agents or conversational systems for real users, including tool use and evaluation.
• Strong Python skills and experience working with production code, APIs, integrations, and unfamiliar codebases.
• Several years in a customer-facing technical engineering role where you delivered working code, such as deployment engineering, consulting, or a startup engineering role.
• A record of owning systems through incidents and ongoing operation, not only initial delivery.
• Ability to communicate technical constraints and performance trade-offs to both engineering and business audiences.

Responsibilities

• Work with customers to define agent behavior, tools, and safeguards, then implement, launch, and maintain agents in production.
• Build Python integrations with customer systems such as CRMs, booking services, and payment flows; address telephony and contact-center connections as needed.
• Investigate failed or poor-quality calls across speech recognition, model behavior, prompts, integrations, and phone infrastructure, then make targeted fixes.
• Create evaluation sets from real calls, run experiments, and use measures such as resolution, containment, and caller experience to guide changes.
• Turn deployment lessons into reusable tools, templates, or platform improvements in partnership with product, research, and engineering teams.
• Lead technical discussions with customer teams, explain trade-offs, and take ownership of outcomes in production.

Skills

Python

Production code

LLM agents

Communication with customers

Incident ownership

Trade-off communication

Tools

Go

C++

APIs

Job description

Role overview

Build and operate customer-facing voice agents that handle real calls, from initial discovery through launch and ongoing improvement. This is a hands-on engineering role combining production LLM systems, real-time voice, and enterprise integrations, with responsibility for how each agent performs after release.

Responsibilities

• Work with customers to define agent behavior, tools, and safeguards, then implement, launch, and maintain agents in production.
• Build Python integrations with customer systems such as CRMs, booking services, and payment flows; address telephony and contact-center connections as needed.
• Investigate failed or poor-quality calls across speech recognition, model behavior, prompts, integrations, and phone infrastructure, then make targeted fixes.
• Create evaluation sets from real calls, run experiments, and use measures such as resolution, containment, and caller experience to guide changes.
• Turn deployment lessons into reusable tools, templates, or platform improvements in partnership with product, research, and engineering teams.
• Lead technical discussions with customer teams, explain trade-offs, and take ownership of outcomes in production.

Requirements

• Experience building and shipping LLM agents or conversational systems for real users, including tool use and evaluation.
• Strong Python skills and experience working with production code, APIs, integrations, and unfamiliar codebases.
• Several years in a customer-facing technical engineering role where you delivered working code, such as deployment engineering, consulting, or a startup engineering role.
• A record of owning systems through incidents and ongoing operation, not only initial delivery.
• Ability to communicate technical constraints and performance trade-offs to both engineering and business audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience with SIP, IVR, contact-center platforms, or real-time audio.
• Background in evaluation, experimentation, machine learning, or regulated fields such as healthcare, utilities, or financial services.
• Go or C++ experience, or work on high-throughput real-time systems.

Benefits and work setup

The role includes equity participation, flexible work from home, and the option to work outside the UK for up to six months per year. Other listed benefits include 25 days of annual leave at entry, increasing with tenure up to 32 days; healthcare and dental cover; enhanced parental leave; a home-working allowance; and an annual learning allowance.