Forward Deployed Engineer - Data Engineering & GenAI

First Soft Solutions LLC; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

First Soft Solutions LLC is seeking a hands-on Forward Deployed Engineer in the Washington, DC metro area. The role involves working with customers to understand needs, designing solutions, and deploying them with a focus on Python, data pipelines, and GenAI applications.

The ideal candidate will have deep experience in software and data engineering, REST API integration, and building AI-powered workflows, including RAG and AI agents, in production environments.

Qualifications

• 8–14 years of overall technology experience.
• Hands-on Python development.
• Strong software engineering experience.
• Strong data engineering experience including ETL/ELT, data pipelines, data modeling, and schema mapping.
• Experience developing and integrating REST APIs.
• Hands-on experience with Generative AI and LLM applications.
• Experience with RAG, AI agents, agentic workflows, tool calling, and AI workflow automation.
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills.
• Strong customer-facing and communication skills.
• U.S. Citizenship required.
• Must be able to work in the Washington, DC metro area 2–3 days per week.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with customers to understand business and technical requirements.
• Turn unclear or complex requirements into working technical solutions.
• Build applications using Python and/or TypeScript.
• Design and integrate REST APIs and backend services.
• Build ETL/ELT pipelines and data-processing workflows.
• Work with structured and unstructured enterprise data.
• Develop applications using LLMs and Generative AI.
• Build RAG solutions, AI agents, tool-calling workflows, and AI automation.
• Integrate AI applications with databases, APIs, cloud platforms, and enterprise systems.
• Test, deploy, monitor, and support solutions in production.
• Identify technical risks, integration issues, and data-quality problems.
• Communicate effectively with customers and senior stakeholders.

Skills

Python

Software engineering

Data engineering

ETL/ELT

Data pipelines

Data modeling

Schema mapping

REST APIs

Generative AI

LLM applications

RAG

AI Agents

Tool calling

AI workflow automation

Debugging

Customer-facing

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Spark

Kafka

Airflow

dbt

Job description

Location: Washington, DC Metro Area

Work Model: Hybrid 2 3 days per week onsite

Citizenship: U.S. Citizenship required

About The Role

We are looking for a hands‑on Forward Deployed Engineer with strong experience in software engineering, data engineering, and Generative AI.

This person will work directly with customers to understand their business and technical problems, design the right solution, and build and deploy it.

The ideal candidate should be comfortable working with customers, writing code, building data pipelines, integrating APIs, developing GenAI applications, and troubleshooting production issues.

Key Responsibilities

• Work directly with customers to understand business and technical requirements.
• Turn unclear or complex requirements into working technical solutions.
• Build applications using Python and/or TypeScript.
• Design and integrate REST APIs and backend services.
• Build ETL/ELT pipelines and data-processing workflows.
• Work with structured and unstructured enterprise data.
• Develop applications using LLMs and Generative AI.
• Build RAG solutions, AI agents, tool-calling workflows, and AI automation.
• Integrate AI applications with databases, APIs, cloud platforms, and enterprise systems.
• Test, deploy, monitor, and support solutions in production.
• Identify technical risks, integration issues, and data‑quality problems.
• Communicate effectively with customers and senior stakeholders.

Required Skills

• 8 14 years of overall technology experience.
• Strong hands‑on Python development.
• Strong software engineering experience.
• Strong data engineering experience including:
  • ETL/ELT
  • Data pipelines
  • Data modeling
  • Schema mapping
• Experience developing and integrating REST APIs.
• Hands‑on experience with Generative AI and LLM applications.
• Experience with one or more of:
  • RAG
  • AI Agents
  • Agentic workflows
  • Tool/function calling
  • AI workflow automation
• Strong debugging and problem‑solving skills.
• Strong customer‑facing and communication skills.
• Ability to work independently with incomplete or changing requirements.
• U.S. Citizenship required.
• Must be able to work in the Washington, DC metro area 2 3 days per week.

Preferred Skills

• Previous Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Technical Consultant experience.
• Federal, defense, intelligence, or government experience.
• AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Databricks, Snowflake, Spark, Kafka, Airflow, or dbt.
• Vector databases, embeddings, and retrieval systems.
• Experience deploying GenAI applications into production.
• Human‑in‑the‑loop AI workflows and AI evaluation.
• Enterprise security, authentication, authorization, and data governance.

Ideal Candidate

We are looking for someone who can talk to the customer, understand the problem, design the solution, write the code, integrate the data and APIs, build the AI workflow, and deploy the final solution.