Forward Deployment Engineer - Agentic AI - Senior Leader

Mackinnon Bruce International; United States; Hybrid; USD 220,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

Mackinnon Bruce International is seeking a hands-on engineering leader to build and scale a Forward Deployment Engineering capability across North America. This player-coach role blends technical leadership, team development and client-facing AI delivery.

You will translate business challenges into scalable, production-ready agentic systems for enterprise clients, balancing architecture direction with delivery from discovery through deployment.

Qualifications

• Extensive enterprise architecture, solutions engineering or technical delivery experience, typically 15–20+ years, including at least five years leading technical teams, at director or similar level.
• Track record of hiring, developing and scaling customer-facing engineering teams across onshore/offshore or matrixed environments.
• Proven delivery of LLM-based agent systems into production, beyond prototypes.
• Strong Python capability and ability to write and review code.
• Experience with agent frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, Semantic Kernel, CrewAI or AutoGen.
• Strong API-first design, distributed systems, event-driven architecture and enterprise data integration.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly and tie decisions to business outcomes.
• Familiarity with semantic models or knowledge graphs would be advantageous.
• International experience delivering projects for large multinational clients would be advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Building, coaching and leading onshore and offshore Forward Deployment Engineering teams.
• Owning architecture and delivery across multiple client engagements, balancing technical quality with business value.
• Designing multi-agent systems with orchestration, tool calling, workflows and memory.
• Establishing standards for MCP, advanced RAG, evaluation, observability and guardrails.
• Integrating AI agents into commerce ecosystems (catalog, pricing, promotions, loyalty, checkout, payments).
• Creating reusable architectures and delivery playbooks and partnering with executives.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

Solutions engineering

Team leadership

Python

LLM agents

LangGraph

LangChain

Semantic Kernel

CrewAI

AutoGen

API-first design

Distributed systems

Event-driven

Data integration

Executive communication

Knowledge graphs

International experience

Tools

LangGraph

LangChain

Semantic Kernel

CrewAI

AutoGen

Job description

Build the team. Shape the architecture. Deliver AI that works in production.

Mackinnon Bruce is partneres with a leading multinational IT, data science, and AI transformation services company, recruiting a hands-on engineering leader to build and scale a Forward Deployment Engineering capability across North America. This is a player-coach opportunity, combining technical leadership, team development and ownership of client-facing Agentic AI delivery.

The opportunity

You will translate business challenges into scalable, governed, production-ready agentic systems across customer-facing digital platforms. Working with enterprise clients, engineering teams and senior stakeholders, you will remain close to the code while setting architectural direction and driving delivery from discovery through deployment.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Building, coaching and leading onshore and offshore Forward Deployment Engineering teams.
• Owning architecture and delivery across multiple client engagements, balancing technical quality with measurable business value.
• Designing multi-agent systems incorporating orchestration, tool calling, stateful workflows and agent memory.
• Establishing standards for Model Context Protocol (MCP), advanced RAG, evaluation, observability and production guardrails.
• Integrating AI agents into commerce ecosystems, including catalog, pricing, promotions, loyalty, checkout and payments.
• Creating reusable architectures and delivery playbooks, while acting as a trusted technical partner to executive stakeholders.

What you will bring

• Extensive enterprise architecture, solutions engineering or technical delivery experience, typically 15–20+ years, including at least five years leading technical teams, at director or similar level.
• A track record of hiring, developing and scaling customer-facing engineering teams across onshore/offshore or matrixed environments.
• Proven delivery of LLM-based agent systems into production, beyond prototypes and proofs of concept.
• Strong Python capability and the confidence to write reference implementations, review code and challenge architectural decisions.
• Experience with agent frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, Semantic Kernel, CrewAI or AutoGen.
• Strong foundations in API-first design, distributed systems, event-driven architecture and enterprise data integration.
• The ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly, navigate competing priorities and connect engineering decisions to commercial outcomes.
• Familiarity with semantic models or knowledge graphs would be advantageous.
• Strong international experience delivering projects for large multinational clients would be strongly advantegeous

Non-Negotiables:

• This role is Hybrid or Onsite depending on your location, the preference is for a candidate on the west coast or Texas, though exceptional candidates will be considered throughout the US
• We are not able to accept candidates who require a work visa, all candidates must be currently in the USA and be either a citizen or a permenant resident
• Meaningful commercial exposure in any of the following industries:
• Consumer & Retail
• Energy & Utilities
• Manufacturing & Logistics