Forward Deployed Software Engineer

Stem IT; McLean (VA); Hybrid; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Stem IT is seeking a Forward Deployed Software Engineer to join our AI-driven team in McLean, Virginia, with a hybrid work model. You will build and deploy AI-powered software directly with customers, solving complex technical challenges and shaping a core product platform.

You will partner with deployment strategists, engineering, product, and GTM teams to bring customers live quickly while turning implementations into scalable features.

Qualifications

• Experience building production software features.
• Hands-on experience with LLM-powered applications and prompt engineering.
• Experience working directly with customers to understand requirements.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy AI-powered software directly with customers.
• Collaborate with deployment strategists, engineering, product, and GTM teams.
• Evaluate AI outputs and improve platform capabilities.

Skills

Software engineering

Full-stack development

Implementation engineering

Solutions engineering

LLM-powered apps

Prompt engineering

Customer-facing

SQL data wrangling

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

React

PostgreSQL

Job description

Venture-backed AI technology startup in the ventilation systems manufacturing industry is looking to add a Forward Deployed Software Engineer to its growing team in McLean, Virginia (hybrid). This is an opportunity to build and deploy AI-powered software directly with customers, solve complex technical challenges, and help shape the evolution of a core product platform.

The ideal candidate will be a strong software engineer with hands-on experience building production applications, integrating LLMs, and working directly with customers. You'll partner closely with deployment strategists, engineering, product, and GTM teams to get customers live quickly while turning successful customer implementations into scalable product capabilities.

Targeting:

• Strong professional experience in software engineering, full-stack development, implementation engineering, solutions engineering, or a related technical field.
• Hands-on experience building and shipping production software features on top of an existing platform.
• Familiarity with modern application technologies such as TypeScript, Node.js, React, and PostgreSQL; experience with all four is not required.
• Experience working directly with customers to understand requirements, troubleshoot issues, and deliver technical solutions.
• Hands-on experience with LLM-powered applications, prompt engineering, and evaluating AI output quality.
• Strong data-wrangling skills, including working with messy files, importing customer data, mapping fields to application data models, and validating results using SQL.
• Ability to distinguish between customer-specific requirements and broader platform improvements that should benefit all customers.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain technical decisions and tradeoffs to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

Nice to Have:

• Experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Implementation Engineer, or early-stage startup engineer.
• Experience with CRM integrations, particularly Salesforce.
• Familiarity with AI-powered document processing, information extraction, or data-intensive applications.
• Experience working with APIs, data integrations, and customer-specific workflows.
• Experience contributing to core product architecture and collaborating with product and engineering teams to implement platform-wide improvements.
• Background in a startup or high-growth technology company.
• Exposure to construction, manufacturing, logistics or similar vertical