Mission Delivery Engineer - CA

FirstMile Ventures; El Segundo (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Kamiwaza AI is seeking a Mission Delivery Engineer (MDE) in El Segundo, CA to lead federal deployments of our platform. You will drive the technical journey from pre-sales PoVs through production handoff, blending coding, architecture, and delivery discipline to achieve mission outcomes.

You will work with DoD/IC customers, build prototypes, ensure security compliance, and enable customers and partners with clear handoff artifacts, playbooks, and scalable deployment patterns for air‑gapped and

Qualifications

• 6+ years in customer-facing technical roles supporting U.S. federal customers.
• Ability to lead end-to-end engagements: discovery, technical validation, PoV/pilot, production implementation, and handoff.
• Comfort operating in sensitive mission contexts with security constraints.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end engagements: discovery, technical validation, PoV/pilot, and production handoff.
• Design and deliver tailored demos, PoVs, and workshops for federal customers.
• Coordinate with DoD/IC stakeholders and align with security guidelines.
• Develop repeatable deployment patterns and enable partner coordination.

Skills

Python

APIs/SDKs

GenAI systems

RAG / retrieval

Distributed systems

Customer-facing

Delivery leadership

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Mission Delivery Engineer (MDE)

Location: El Segundo, CA

Role Overview

Kamiwaza AI is seeking a Mission Delivery Engineer (MDE) to serve as a forward‑deploy, hands‑on technical leader for U.S. federal customers. You will own the technical journey from pre‑sales discovery and proof‑of‑value (PoV) demos of custom applications on the Kamiwaza platform through production implementation and successful hand‑off to the customer or an integration partner.

This role is built for a builder who is also consultative and delivery‑minded: you can run discovery, quantify value, tell a compelling technical story, write real code, and then harden what you built so it can operate reliably in mission environments (including constrained, disconnected, or air‑gapped deployments).

This is not a pure presentation role and not a back‑office engineering role. It is an end‑to‑end mission delivery role that combines pre‑sales technical execution with post‑sale implementation, operationalization, enablement, and structured hand‑over.

Core Mission

Accelerate federal adoption of Kamiwaza by translating high‑value mission use cases into credible PoVs and demo experiences, and then converting the successful PoVs into production‑ready deployments and repeatable delivery patterns that reduce risk, increase win rate, and improve time‑to‑mission impact.

Key Responsibilities

Mission Discovery, Scoping & Success Planning

• Lead technical discovery with DoD/IC and federal customers: mission workflows, data sources, operating constraints (including DDIL), stakeholders, and success criteria.

• Translate discovery into a clear use case definition, solution outline, and measurable PoV plan (what 'good' looks like, how it will be measured, and what data is required).

• Define a PoV‑to‑production path upfront: architecture assumptions, integration points, security considerations, and what must be true for production go‑live.

Pre‑Sales PoV, Demos, Workshops & Rapid Prototyping

• Design and deliver tailored demos, whiteboard sessions, and hands‑on workshops for executive and practitioner audiences.

• Build rapid prototypes and custom apps on top of the Kamiwaza platform using real or representative customer data, often under tight timelines.

• Demonstrate mission workflows such as RAG, agentic orchestration, streaming/event‑driven ingestion, and edge‑capable inference, aligned to customer constraints.

• Instrument PoVs with basic evaluation and guardrails (grounding checks, policy constraints, transparency) to maintain credibility and accelerate stakeholder buy‑in.

Production Implementation & Delivery Engineering

• Convert successful PoVs into production implementations: harden code, modularize components, introduce testing, and align with customer engineering standards.

• Design and implement integrations with customer identity, data, and workflow systems (APIs, messaging/streaming, file stores, enterprise data platforms).

• Establish deployment automation and environment parity (dev/test/prod) using containerization and modern DevOps practices (Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, logging/metrics).

• Drive performance, reliability, and operational readiness for mission workloads (observability, scaling, cost/performance tradeoffs, and failure‑mode planning).

Security, Compliance & Deployment Readiness

• Operate with a security‑first mindset: data containment, least privilege, auditability, and safe handling of sensitive customer information.

• Partner with security/accreditation stakeholders to support an RMF/ATO‑ready approach (documentation inputs, deployment patterns, and control considerations).

• Ensure demos, PoVs, and production deployments remain credible by aligning with customer environment constraints and sustainment realities (including classified and air‑gapped environments).

Handoff, Enablement & Partner Collaboration

• Deliver clear hand‑off packages to customers or partners: architecture diagrams, deployment guides, runbooks, IaC/configuration artifacts, and code repositories as appropriate.

• Lead knowledge transfer sessions and enablement workshops for customer and partner engineers, operators, and sustainment teams.

• Define acceptance criteria with stakeholders and drive to a documented production sign‑off (or a clear, agreed transition plan) at the end of each engagement.

• Coordinate with systems integrators and partners to ensure continuity from PoV through production, including roles/responsibilities, interfaces, and escalation paths.

Technical Deal Support & Field‑to‑Product Feedback

• Partner with Sales and Capture to shape technical win strategies, address customer objections, and support bid/no‑bid decisions with clear delivery and technical risk assessment.

• Contribute to proposals and technical responses (architecture, integration approach, security posture, and implementation plan).

• Capture structured feedback from engagements and translate it into actionable product requirements, prioritizing gaps that impact multiple customers.

• Partner with Engineering and Product to improve packaging, documentation, deployment automation, and connectors that reduce delivery friction.

First 180 Days - Mandate for Success

Days 0-45: Platform Mastery & Delivery Toolkit

• Achieve deep, hands‑on mastery of the Kamiwaza platform (core capabilities, APIs/SDKs, deployment patterns, and differentiators).

• Stand up a repeatable demo/PoV environment (containers/Kubernetes, configs, datasets, scripts) that can run reliably on customer laptops and in constrained environments.

• Create a PoV‑to‑production starter kit: reference repo structure, baseline CI/CD, logging/metrics standards, and documentation templates for handoff.

• Shadow priority accounts to learn target missions, typical data sources, and stakeholder dynamics; identify 2‑3 high‑leverage PoV use cases.

Days 46-120: PoV Impact and Production Conversion

• Lead discovery and deliver tailored demos for priority accounts; own at least 1‑2 PoV engagements end‑to‑end.

• Convert at least one PoV into a production implementation or a production‑ready pilot (with deployment automation, observability, and security posture aligned to the target environment).

• Establish a repeatable handoff motion with a partner or customer team (documentation, enablement sessions, and acceptance criteria).

• Partner with Sales/Capture to influence active pursuits with clear technical win themes and delivery risk mitigation plans.

Days 121-180: Scale Repeatability and Partner Enablement

• Create repeatable playbooks: discovery checklist, PoV scoping templates, demo flows, production hardening checklist, and handoff/enablement kits.

• Reduce time‑to‑demo and time‑to‑production by standardizing reference architectures and deployment patterns across cloud, core data centers, and edge.

• Enable at least one partner or customer team to independently deploy and operate a Kamiwaza‑based solution using your handoff materials and training.

• Provide structured field feedback that influences roadmap items tied to federal deployment, security, integration needs, and delivery acceleration.

Minimum Requirements

Federal Customer‑Facing & Delivery Experience

• 6+ years in customer‑facing technical roles (Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, Forward‑Deployed Engineer, Delivery Engineer, or similar) supporting U.S. federal customers.

• Demonstrated ability to lead end‑to‑end engagements: discovery, technical validation, PoV/pilot, production implementation, and handoff to customer or partner.

• Comfort operating in sensitive mission contexts and communicating clearly within security and information‑handling constraints.

Hands‑On Technical Depth

• Strong software engineering skills with the ability to build and harden applications rapidly (Python strongly preferred; experience with APIs/SDKs and modern web/app frameworks).

• Working knowledge of GenAI systems (LLMs), RAG/retrieval, embeddings/vector search, agentic workflows, and evaluation/guardrails.

• Experience with distributed systems concepts and integration patterns (APIs, event‑driven/streaming, data pipelines).