Senior / Staff Forward Deployed Engineer – AI

Vantedge Search; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Vantedge Search is seeking a Senior / Staff Forward Deployed Engineer to work with a high‑tech enterprise client in Palo Alto. You will solve complex problems through hands‑on software and AI engineering, from discovery through hands‑on development, deployment, and iteration.

This FDE role emphasizes working directly with customer teams to understand problems, define solutions, and deliver production AI systems using Google Gemini and Vertex AI.

Qualifications

• 10–12 years of professional software engineering experience.
• 2+ customer-facing engineering experience preferred.
• Hands-on development with Google Gemini / Google Cloud AI.
• Experience with APIs, microservices, Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD.
• Ability to work independently in ambiguous environments without backlog.
• Excellent communication with engineering leaders and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Translate customer problems into working software.
• Build production-grade AI applications using Google Gemini and Google Cloud AI.
• Develop agentic AI and multi-agent applications.
• Work with Gemini, Vertex AI, Gemini APIs, Google Cloud AI services, and agent platforms.
• Build full-stack apps across backend, frontend, APIs, data, cloud, and AI.
• Prototype rapidly with customers and turn prototypes into production systems.
• Iterate based on real-world feedback and business outcomes.
• Use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate engineering.
• Explain decisions to technical and business stakeholders.
• Develop reusable engineering patterns and playbooks.

Skills

Software engineering

Customer-facing

AI development

Cloud platforms

Frontend & backend

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Vertex AI

Gemini

Job description

Work Model: Hybrid – 1–2 days onsite per week

Experience: 10–12 years

Employment Type: Full-Time

About the Role

We are looking for a Senior / Staff Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with a high-tech enterprise client in Palo Alto, solving complex and ambiguous business and technology problems through hands-on software and AI engineering.

This is an FDE role-not a traditional backlog-driven engineering position. You will work closely with customer engineering, product, and business teams to understand problems, determine what should be built, and take solutions from discovery and architecture through hands-on development, deployment, and iteration.

A strong background with Google AI technologies, particularly Gemini and Google Cloud's AI ecosystem, is required.

What You'll Do

• Work directly with customers to understand ambiguous business and technical problems and translate them into working software.
• Build production-grade AI applications using Google Gemini and Google Cloud AI technologies.
• Develop agentic AI and multi-agent applications, including tool calling, orchestration, RAG, grounding, evaluation, and observability.
• Work with technologies such as Gemini, Vertex AI, Gemini APIs, Google Cloud AI services, and agent platforms.
• Build full-stack applications across backend, frontend, APIs, data, cloud infrastructure, and AI.
• Rapidly prototype with customers and turn successful prototypes into reliable production systems.
• Work with customer engineering and product teams to iterate based on real-world feedback and business outcomes.
• Use modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate engineering and experimentation.
• Communicate technical decisions, architecture, tradeoffs, and business impact to both technical teams and senior stakeholders.
• Develop reusable engineering patterns and playbooks from successful customer engagements.

Required Qualifications

• 10–12 years of professional software engineering / technology experience.
• Strong experience working in a Forward Deployed Engineer, Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Customer-Embedded Engineer, or similar customer-facing engineering role.
• Strong hands-on software engineering background with significant personal coding experience.
• Production experience building applications using Google Gemini / Google AI technologies.
• Experience with Google Cloud AI / Vertex AI / Gemini APIs or related Google AI technologies.
• Strong experience with LLM-based applications, RAG, agentic AI, or multi-agent systems.
• Experience taking solutions from customer discovery through production deployment.
• Strong backend and frontend engineering capabilities.
• Experience with APIs, microservices, databases, cloud platforms, Docker/Kubernetes, and CI/CD.
• Strong ability to work independently in ambiguous environments without a detailed backlog or predefined solution.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to work directly with engineering leaders, product teams, and senior business stakeholders.
• Ability to explain complex AI and technical concepts in clear business terms.

Highly Preferred

Experience with one or more of the following:

• Antigravity
• Tool/function calling
• Multi-agent orchestration
• LangGraph / LangChain / Semantic Kernel
• RAG / GraphRAG
• Vector databases and knowledge graphs
• AI evaluation frameworks
• LLM observability and production monitoring
• AI-assisted development using tools such as Gemini, Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot

What Makes This an FDE Role?

You won't simply receive a specification and implement it.

The customer may say:

"We have this business problem. We're not sure what the right AI solution is. Can you figure it out?"

You'll be expected to:

Understand the problem → Define the solution → Build it → Deploy it → Test it with the customer → Iterate → Measure the outcome.

Ideal Candidate

You are a strong software engineer who is also comfortable with customers.

You enjoy working in environments where the problem isn't completely defined, can move quickly from an idea to a working prototype, and are comfortable explaining your technical decisions to engineers as well as senior business stakeholders.

You don't wait for a backlog to tell you what to build—you help determine what should be built and why.

Work Location:

This position requires 1–2 days per week onsite in the Bay Area, CA, working directly with a high-tech enterprise client.

If you're an FDE who has built production AI solutions using Gemini / Google AI and enjoys working directly with customers, we'd like to hear from you.