Remote Forward Deployed Engineer for National Security

Red Cell Partners; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care for you and your family

Unlimited PTO

401(k) and equity incentives

Maternity/Paternity leave (14 weeks)

Professional development opportunities

Mental health benefits

Job summary

Red Cell Partners is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to join a stealth National Security incubation, embedding with federal customers to turn mission needs into production‑ready systems. You will work across discovery, prototype, and deployment while maintaining strict security standards and clear communication with engineers and stakeholders.

The role requires building AI‑enabled applications and integrations in secure environments, translating requirements into concrete plans, and owning

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and ability to build production‑quality systems.
• Experience with backend engineering, distributed systems, APIs, data pipelines, cloud infrastructure, or applied AI/ML systems.
• Ability to operate in ambiguous customer environments and turn unclear requirements into working software.
• Strong technical communication skills with engineers, product teams, executives, and customer stakeholders.
• Comfort working across the full stack when needed, including backend services, frontend interfaces, infrastructure, integrations, and deployment workflows.
• High ownership, bias for action, and ability to drive outcomes without waiting for perfect requirements.
• Strong debugging instincts and ability to reason across application code, data, infrastructure, networking, and customer systems.
• Interest in national‑security missions and willingness to work in secure or restricted environments.
• U.S. Citizen eligible for U.S. Security Secret Clearance.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with federal and national‑security customers to understand mission workflows, pain points, data environments, and operational constraints.
• Build and deploy AI‑enabled applications, agents, integrations, and workflow automation in secure customer environments.
• Translate customer needs into technical requirements, implementation plans, and product feedback for the core engineering team.
• Own delivery from prototype through production, including architecture, backend services, APIs, integrations, observability, testing, deployment, and customer acceptance.
• Integrate with customer systems, data sources, identity providers, and cloud or on‑prem infrastructure.
• Partner with product, engineering, security, and customer teams to ensure solutions are secure, reliable, auditable, and operationally useful.
• Debug issues in deployed environments and drive fast resolution across application, infrastructure, data, and integration layers.
• Contribute reusable patterns, platform improvements, and documentation back to the broader engineering organization.
• Operate with strong judgment in environments involving sensitive data, government stakeholders, and mission‑critical workflows.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

APIs

Data pipelines

Cloud infrastructure

AI/ML systems

Technical communication

Full stack

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Kubernetes

Terraform

Docker

Job description

Red Cell Partners is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to join a stealth National Security incubation, embedding with federal customers to turn mission needs into production‑ready systems. You will work across discovery, prototype, and deployment while maintaining strict security standards and clear communication with engineers and stakeholders.

The role requires building AI‑enabled applications and integrations in secure environments, translating requirements into concrete plans, and owning