Forward Deployed Engineer Level II

Madison-Davis, LLC; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Madison-Davis, LLC is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to co-create AI-enabled enterprise solutions directly with corporate leaders, PMs, and platform teams. You will prototype rapidly, then harden into secure, auditable production systems.

The role blends hands-on AI and full-stack work with architecture ownership, focused on CRM, HCM, ITSM, ERP, and custom internal products built atop them. Expect high-visibility delivery and mentorship responsibilities.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering with stakeholder delivery.
• End-to-end architecture from requirements to production with documentation.
• Hands-on AI agents, including tool use, memory, and multi-step reasoning.
• Use of AI-assisted tooling in daily workflow (Claude Code, Codex or equivalent).
• Experience deploying agents on major platforms (AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry, or equivalent).
• Knowledge of Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Experience with LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or Semantic Kernel.
• Strong Python and frontend framework skills (React/Vue/Angular).
• Cloud experience (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Excellent communication and stakeholder alignment skills.
• Comfort with shifting priorities and high ownership.
• Background in financial services or regulated data environments.
• Experience with RAG architectures, vector databases, and semantic search.
• Prompt engineering and LLM evaluation experience.
• Agent observability and tracing tools.
• Containerization and CI/CD (Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions).
• Experience with enterprise SaaS and iPaaS (Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, MuleSoft, Boomi, Workato).
• Experience running technical discovery workshops and architecture reviews.

Responsibilities

• Own solution design for cross-functional app/data problems from discovery to blueprint.
• Define architecture choices and trade-offs for engineering and leadership.
• Design modular systems balancing rapid delivery with reliability and security.
• Contribute to architecture reviews and ensure enterprise alignment.
• Produce architecture diagrams, data flows, API contracts, and solution briefs.
• Build working prototypes on compressed timelines and scale them to production.
• Deliver frontend interfaces and dashboards for non-technical audiences.
• Iterate with direct feedback from business owners, PMs, and end users.
• Meld AI into corporate apps like CRM, HCM, ITSM, ERP with enterprise-grade governance.
• Mentor engineers on rapid delivery, AI development, and stakeholder-facing work.
• Foster a high-ownership culture where speed and quality align.

Skills

5+ yrs software engineering

End-to-end architecture

AI agents development

AI tooling experience

Production agents (AWS Bedrock/Azure/)

Model Context Protocol

LangChain/LangGraph

Frontend framework (React/Angular/Vue)

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)

Docker/Kubernetes

CI/CD (GitHub Actions)

Tools

AWS Bedrock

Azure AI Foundry

LangChain

LangGraph

AutoGen

CrewAI

Semantic Kernel

React

Vue

Angular

Docker

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

Salesforce

Workday

ServiceNow

MuleSoft

Boomi

Workato

Job description

Our client is an enterprise financial services organization operating across multiple business lines and regulatory jurisdictions. The firm is investing heavily in modernizing how its corporate functions run — replacing manual process with automated, well-instrumented systems, and building internal products that its own people actually want to use. Technology here is treated as a core capability, not a support function, and engineers work close to the business rather than behind an intake queue.

Role Overview

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will work at the point where business need meets technical possibility — embedded directly with corporate function leaders, product managers, and platform engineering teams to design, prototype, and ship solutions to high-priority problems.

This is not a role built around long release cycles and detailed upfront specifications. You will be expected to move from a first conversation to a working prototype in days, then harden that prototype to enterprise standards for security, auditability, and scale. Success depends on an unusual combination: real depth as a hands‑on engineer across applied AI and full-stack development, paired with the credibility and communication skills to earn trust from senior business stakeholders and drive alignment without formal authority. You should be as comfortable sketching an integration architecture with a line‑of‑business head in the morning as you are writing the code for it that afternoon.

This is the Level II role, carrying architecture ownership and mentorship responsibility in addition to hands‑on delivery. Your focus will center on the corporate application landscape — CRM, HCM, ITSM, ERP, and the internal products built on top of them.

Key Responsibilities

• Own solution design for complex, cross‑functional application and data problems, from discovery through technical blueprint
• Define architecture decisions and articulate the trade‑offs behind them to both engineering peers and business leadership
• Design modular systems that move quickly without abandoning enterprise expectations for reliability, security, and maintainability
• Contribute to architecture and security reviews, ensuring solutions align with established enterprise patterns and regulatory obligations
• Produce clear technical artifacts: architecture diagrams, data flow maps, API contracts, and written solution briefs

Rapid Prototyping & Delivery

• Build working prototypes for ambiguous business problems on compressed timelines, typically days to weeks
• Convert loosely defined business requirements into concrete technical scope with minimal direction
• Deliver prototypes that are built to survive production, not to be thrown away after the demo
• Iterate continuously against direct feedback from business owners, product managers, and end users
• Build clean front‑end interfaces and dashboards that make data and automation outputs usable for non‑technical audiences
• Apply strong product and UX instincts to simplify complicated workflows rather than reproduce them in software

Applied AI & Automation

• Design, build, and deploy AI agents and automated workflows that carry business processes end to end
• Develop reusable capabilities and tooling that compose into larger automated pipelines
• Connect models and agents to enterprise systems, APIs, and data sources through modern integration patterns, including Model Context Protocol servers and clients
• Build evaluation harnesses, guardrails, and monitoring to keep automated systems reliable, explainable, and defensible under audit
• Integrate LLMs, retrieval systems, and ML models into production workflows within a regulated environment
• Track the applied AI landscape closely and bring credible new techniques and tooling into the team

Stakeholder Partnership & Influence

• Embed with corporate function, product, and engineering teams to define problems jointly and deliver against them together
• Shape technical direction and build cross‑team alignment without relying on reporting lines
• Communicate technical concepts clearly to non‑technical stakeholders, in writing, in working sessions, and in executive forums
• Mentor engineers on patterns for rapid delivery, applied AI development, and stakeholder‑facing work
• Contribute to a low‑ego, high‑ownership team culture where speed and quality are treated as compatible

Qualifications

Critical Skills

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including meaningful time in a stakeholder‑facing or embedded delivery capacity
• Demonstrated ability to architect systems end to end — requirements through production deployment — with the documentation and communication to match
• Hands‑on experience building AI agents, including tool use, memory, and multi‑step reasoning
• Practical use of AI‑assisted engineering tooling (Claude Code, Codex, or equivalent) as part of a daily workflow
• Experience deploying and operating agents in production on a major platform (AWS Bedrock / AgentCore, Azure AI Foundry, or equivalent)
• Working knowledge of Model Context Protocol, including building or consuming MCP servers to connect agents to enterprise systems
• Experience with agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or Semantic Kernel
• Strong Python plus at least one modern front‑end framework (React, Vue, or Angular)
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills — you build trust quickly, operate well in ambiguity, and align people who don't report to you
• Comfort with shifting priorities and high ownership expectations
• Background in financial services, banking, insurance, or asset management — particularly in regulated data environments (SOX, GLBA, PCI, or model risk governance)
• Experience with RAG architectures, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector), and semantic search
• Prompt engineering, fine‑tuning, and LLM evaluation experience
• Agent observability and tracing tooling (LangSmith, Arize, Weights & Biases, or similar)
• Containerization and CI/CD practice (Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions)
• Hands‑on work with enterprise SaaS and iPaaS platforms (Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, MuleSoft, Boomi, Workato)
• Experience facilitating technical discovery workshops, design sprints, or architecture reviews