Forward Deployed Engineer-Innovation - Merriam, KS

Seaboard Foods; Merriam (KS); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Vision, and Dental benefits

401(k) with company match

Paid Time Off and company holidays

Wellness program and employee pork‑pro

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Seaboard Foods is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer‑Innovation to build AI‑powered agentic workflows and production tools in Merriam, KS. You will partner across functions to automate processes, deploy AI solutions, and improve operational efficiency, while maintaining toolsets like OpenClaw and Hermes/Obsidian knowledge bases.

You will contribute to ontology work, tooling integration, and evaluating new AI approaches, with an emphasis on rapid, production‑grade delivery and cost discipline in

Qualifications

• Five or more years shipping production software with verifiable portfolio.
• Hands-on experience building, evaluating, and deploying LLM-powered agents with tool use and multi-step planning.
• Fluency in Python and TypeScript; experience with at least one agent framework and one evaluation framework.
• Knowledge of Foundry and AIP (ontology, Logic, Workshop) or equivalent enterprise platform.
• Cost and latency awareness for LLM systems; token budgeting and routing.
• Comfort working with non-technical operators to scope and validate problems.
• Autonomous, high‑velocity development with AI-assisted tooling.

Responsibilities

• Build, evaluate, and deploy end-to-end production agentic workflows with responsible post-deploy observability.
• Model and extend ontology in Foundry and AIP across multiple domains (Production, Supply Chain, HR, etc.).
• Surface high‑leverage workflows and ship AI-assisted applications from prototype to production rapidly.
• Operate and extend the OpenClaw agent harness; manage token spend and SLOs for deployed agents.
• Scout and prototype frontier model families and agent frameworks; publish internal write-ups and drive roadmap items.
• Code, run evaluations, and push to production with minimal delegation.

Skills

LLM-powered agents

Python

TypeScript

Agent frameworks

Cost & latency optimization

Stakeholder communication

Autonomy in fast-paced environments

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering/IS or related

Tools

Foundry

AIP

Live Production ontology

Job description

YOUR OPPORTUNITY

We have an exciting Forward Deployed Engineer‑Innovation opportunity within our Innovation team in Merriam, KS. In this role, you will partner across business functions to identify opportunities to automate manual processes, build and deploy AI-powered solutions, and improve operational efficiency. You will play a key role in developing and maintaining internal tools - including agent-based systems and applications - while supporting process optimization, cross‑functional collaboration, and the advancement of our innovation capabilities.

ABOUT US

At Seaboard Foods, we create the most sought‑after pork. As one of the nation’s leading pork producers and exporters, we are committed to producing high‑quality food responsibly while connecting every step from our farms to family tables. More than 5,400 employees across five states support our farms, feed mills, and processing operations, helping deliver Prairie Fresh pork to customers in more than 30 countries worldwide. At Seaboard Foods, we value teamwork, integrity, safety, and continuous improvement. As a Fortune 500 employer and recent Business Journal "Best Places to Work" nominee, we are proud to foster a culture where employees can grow, contribute, and make a meaningful impact.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

This list is not intended to be all-inclusive, and other duties may be assigned.

Primary:

• Build, evaluate, and deploy production agentic workflows end-to-end. That includes scoping problems with business units, selecting models and tools, designing harnesses, deploying into operations, and instrumenting for post‑deploy observability. Stand up reproducible evaluation pipelines so agent quality is measured rather than asserted.
• Model and extend the ontology in Foundry and AIP. This covers the objects, links, actions, and write‑back paths that power agents, AIP Logic workflows, and internally built applications. Translate domain processes across Live Production, Plant Operations, Supply Chain, Pricing, Sales and Scheduling, MICS, and HR into ontology primitives, and enforce hygiene (naming, lineage, permissions, deprecation) as surface area scales.
• Surface high‑leverage manual workflows and retire them with shipped software, delivering AI‑assisted applications from prototypes to production in days rather than quarters.
• Operate and extend the Innovation team’s OpenClaw agent harness as the primary agent runtime. Responsibilities include prompt and context plumbing, tool registration, guardrails, and routing. Manage tokenomics by budgeting, monitoring, and optimizing token spend per workflow, and enforce cost SLOs across deployed agents. Curate the supporting Hermes and Obsidian knowledge substrate, including ingestion, indexing, freshness, and access control.
• Be a part of the Innovation team’s R&D arsenal. Continuously scout, benchmark, and prototype against the frontier of model families, agent frameworks, evaluation tooling, and AI‑assisted development environments. Publish short, decision‑grade internal write‑ups. Convert validated bets into roadmap items and kill the rest quickly.
• Demonstrate, every sprint, the non‑negotiable expectation of this seat: builder by blood. This role writes code (with AI‑assisted development), runs evaluations, and pushes to production. It does not delegate the build.

Secondary:

• Partner with IT, security, and compliance to land deployments inside the controls expected of a publicly traded enterprise, without sacrificing iteration speed.
• Mentor citizen developers and adjacent technical staff at Seaboard Foods on agentic and AI‑assisted development practices.
• Present progress, results, and forward‑looking plans to Seaboard Foods leadership on a recurring cadence, including quantified savings estimates, adoption metrics, and risks.
• Run trainings and workshops for internal teams as new initiatives are built and deployed, so the people closest to the work can operate and extend what ships.
• Stay current with emerging trends in agentic AI, ontology engineering, and AI‑assisted software delivery, and assess their applicability to Seaboard Foods.
• Build relationships with technology vendors, partners, and research communities to maintain a pipeline of innovative solutions.
• Perform additional duties as assigned.
• Participate in safety meetings and training.
• Be constantly aware of their personal safety and that of their coworkers.

CORE COMPETENCIES FOR SUCCESS IN ALL ROLES

Instills trust, communicates effectively, is action‑oriented, ensures accountability, and drives results.

QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required or preferred. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Required:

• Five (5) or more years of progressive experience shipping production software, with a recent and verifiable portfolio (repositories, deployed applications, agents in production).
• Hands‑on experience building, evaluating, and deploying LLM‑powered agents, including tool use, retrieval, and multi‑step planning. A clear point of view on what rigorous agent evaluation looks like.
• Strong fluency in Python and TypeScript. Working command of at least one modern agent framework and one evaluation framework.
• Working knowledge of Foundry and AIP (ontology, AIP Logic, Workshop, Pipeline Builder), or equivalent enterprise data and ontology platform experience with a clear ability to ramp quickly.
• Disciplined cost and latency instincts for LLM systems, including token budgeting, caching, prompt and context optimization, and routing.
• Comfortable working directly with non‑technical operators, on the floor, in the office, and over the phone, to discover, scope, and validate problems.
• Self‑directed builder comfortable operating with high autonomy in fast‑paced, ambiguous environments with a track record of using AI‑assisted development environments to compress prototype‑to‑production timelines from months to days.

Preferred:

• Prior Forward Deployed Engineer, solutions engineer, or embedded delivery experience at a software company, AI lab, or top‑tier consultancy.
• Experience with knowledge‑graph and retrieval tools such as Obsidian, graph databases, hybrid retrieval, and vector stores.
• Background in agribusiness, food production, manufacturing, logistics, or commodities.
• Open‑source contributions to agent, evaluation, or developer‑tools ecosystems.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS) and modern DevOps and CI/CD practices.
• Experience generating and reporting quantifiable savings estimates and ROI metrics for AI initiatives to senior leadership.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent demonstrable shipping experience.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

The physical and work demands listed below are representative of those an employee should possess to successfully perform the essential functions of the position. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of the job.

• Primarily an office environment with some need to work in the field.

WHY SEABOARD FOODS?

• Medical, vision, and dental benefits
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid Time Off and company holidays
• Wellness program and employee pork purchase program
• Tuition reimbursement

For a complete list of our benefits, please visit our career site: https://www.seaboardfoods.com/careers/why-sbf/

Seaboard Foods is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, gender identity, protected veterans' status, status as a disabled individual, or any other status protected by law.