Senior Forward-Deployed AI Engineer for Government

Zekai; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Performance-based bonuses

Health insurance premium reimbursement

401(k) plan with company match

Remote-first workforce

Job summary

Zekai is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to lead the development and deployment of applied AI systems for U.S. Government missions in the Greater Washington DC area.

The role covers model experimentation, infrastructure, and production deployment in high-security environments, with forward-deployed work for government partners. You will own complex technical initiatives, drive architectural decisions, and translate mission needs into scalable, reliable AI systems while providing

Qualifications

• Extensive professional software engineering experience delivering production-grade systems.
• Advanced Python engineering with end-to-end ownership.
• Experience deploying LLM applications and agentic AI systems.
• Experience designing scalable data pipelines, ML infra, and model evaluation.
• Familiarity with RL workflows, simulation environments, or model experimentation.
• Ability to lead initiatives, make architectural decisions, and mentor engineers.
• Ability to operate independently in high-security, mission-critical environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and deployment of agentic AI systems for high-impact missions.
• Architect and integrate LLM applications and multi-agent workflows.
• Serve as senior technical partner to government stakeholders.
• Develop data curation and evaluation pipelines for model training.
• Scale infrastructure for model inference, experimentation, and deployment.
• Build systems turning data, models, and tools into operational autonomy.
• Own full lifecycle: architecture, implementation, deployment, reliability, security.
• Drive decisions, resolve engineering challenges, and mentor engineers.

Skills

Advanced Python

LLM applications

Agentic AI

Data pipelines

ML infrastructure

Leadership

Forward deployment

Tools

Python tooling

RL workflows

Job description

Zekai is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to lead the development and deployment of applied AI systems for U.S. Government missions in the Greater Washington DC area.

The role covers model experimentation, infrastructure, and production deployment in high-security environments, with forward-deployed work for government partners. You will own complex technical initiatives, drive architectural decisions, and translate mission needs into scalable, reliable AI systems while providing