Staff Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)

Scale AI, Inc.

San Francisco (CA)

On-site

USD 252,000 - 315,000

Full time

14 days+

Get more replies from employers

Send a job-specific resume in minutes.

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
Generous PTO

Job summary

Scale AI, Inc. is seeking a Staff Frontier Agents Engineer to act as the technical bridge between our advanced AI capabilities and strategic customers. This hands-on, technical role involves customer engagement, designing AI solutions, and ensuring successful deployment.

The ideal candidate will have 8+ years of software engineering experience, proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks, and a strong knack for problem-solving. The role offers a competitive salary range from $252,000 to $315,000 with comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

  • 8+ years of software engineering experience with strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and system design.
  • Production Python expertise with experience in modern ML/AI frameworks.
  • Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to navigate ambiguous requirements.

Responsibilities

  • Partner directly with enterprise customers to understand their technical infrastructure and data pipelines.
  • Design and implement custom integrations between Scale AI's platform and customer environments.
  • Deploy and configure AI models and agents within customer security and compliance boundaries.
  • Debug complex technical issues across the entire stack to provide effective solutions.

Skills

Software engineering experience
Production Python expertise
Problem-solving skills
Excellent communication skills

Education

8+ years of relevant experience
Deep understanding of LLMs

Tools

AWS
Docker
Kubernetes
Terraform

Job description

About Scale AI

Scale AI is the data foundation for AI, helping organizations build and deploy reliable production AI applications. We partner with leading enterprises and government organizations to accelerate their AI initiatives through our data annotation platform, generative AI solutions, and enterprise AI capabilities.

Role Overview

As a Staff Frontier Agents Engineer on our Enterprise team, you'll be the technical bridge between Scale AI's cutting‑edge AI capabilities and our most strategic customers. You'll work with enterprise clients to understand their unique challenges, architect custom AI solutions, and ensure successful deployment and adoption of AI systems in production environments.

This is a hands‑on technical role that combines deep engineering expertise with customer‑facing problem solving. You'll work directly with customer engineering teams to integrate AI into their critical workflows.

Key Responsibilities
Customer Integration & Deployment
  • Partner directly with enterprise customers to understand their technical infrastructure, data pipelines, and business requirements
  • Design and implement custom integrations between Scale AI's platform and customer data environments (cloud platforms, data warehouses, internal APIs)
  • Build robust data connectors and ETL pipelines to ingest, process, and prepare customer data for AI workflows
  • Deploy and configure AI models and agents within customer security and compliance boundaries
AI Agent Development
  • Develop production‑grade AI agents tailored to customer use cases across domains like customer support, data analysis, content generation, and workflow automation
  • Architect multi‑agent systems that orchestrate between different models, tools, and data sources
  • Implement evaluation frameworks to measure agent performance and iterate toward business objectives
  • Design human‑in‑the‑loop workflows and feedback mechanisms for continuous agent improvement
Prompt Engineering & Optimization
  • Create sophisticated prompt engineering strategies optimized for customer‑specific domains and data
  • Build and maintain prompt libraries, templates, and best practices for customer use cases
  • Conduct systematic prompt experimentation and A/B testing to improve model outputs
  • Implement RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) systems and fine‑tuning pipelines where appropriate
Technical Leadership & Collaboration
  • Serve as the primary technical point of contact for strategic enterprise accounts
  • Collaborate with customer data scientists, ML engineers, and software developers to ensure smooth integration
  • Provide technical training and knowledge transfer to customer teams
  • Work closely with Scale's product and engineering teams to translate customer needs into product improvements
  • Document technical architectures, integration patterns, and best practices
Problem Solving & Innovation
  • Debug complex technical issues across the entire stack, from data pipelines to model outputs
  • Rapidly prototype solutions to unblock customers and prove out new use cases
  • Stay current on the latest AI/ML research and tools, bringing innovative approaches to customer problems
  • Identify opportunities for productization based on common customer patterns
Required Qualifications
  • 8+ years of software engineering experience with strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms, and system design
  • Production Python expertise with experience in modern ML/AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, HuggingFace, OpenAI API)
  • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern data infrastructure
  • Strong problem‑solving skills with the ability to navigate ambiguous requirements and rapidly iterate toward solutions
  • Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences
Preferred Qualifications
Agent Development Wiz
  • Deep understanding of LLMs including prompting techniques, embeddings, and RAG architectures
  • Experience building and deploying AI agents or autonomous systems in production
  • Knowledge of vector databases and semantic search systems
  • Contributions to open‑source AI/ML projects
Infrastructure Guru
  • Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines
  • Experience using Terraform, Bicep, or other Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools
  • Previous work in a devops, platform, or infra role
  • Familiarity with enterprise security, compliance, and governance requirements (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA)
Customer Product Whisperer
  • Proven ability to work with customers in a technical consulting, solutions engineering, or product engineering role
  • Domain expertise in verticals like finance, healthcare, government, or manufacturing
  • Experience with technical enablement or teaching programs
Sample Projects

The following are some examples of the types of projects we've worked on with customers. All of these projects leverage customer data, integrate directly into customers' existing systems, and are deployed on their infrastructure.

Deep Research for Due Diligence

For a global professional services firm, we developed a sophisticated deep research agent to assist in due diligence. This agent employs a multi‑agent architecture for robust fact‑checking, integrates several internal MCP tools, and processes complex, unstructured data sources. This solution reliably saves employees hundreds of hours weekly.

Churn Prediction

Working with a TelCo organization, we built a model utilizing customer data to predict churn likelihood. The system then curates personalized offers based on this prediction. This model was integrated into a "next best action" copilot, enabling call center agents to proactively surface relevant offers to customers, leading to a significant reduction in churn.

Data Extraction Voice Agent

We partnered with a healthcare organization to create a lifelike voice agent and avatar designed to gather unstructured health information from patients. Engineered for low latency, the agent adeptly manages conversational flow, adheres to safety guardrails, and efficiently handles data extraction. This automation saves the organization's nurses hundreds of hours each week.

Compensation

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job‑related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval.

You will also receive benefits including comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, generous PTO, and additional benefits such as a commuter stipend. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full‑time position is $252,000—$315,000 USD.

Equal Opportunity Statement

We are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

Reasonable Accommodations

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at accommodations@scale.com.

Pay Transparency

We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.

Privacy Notice

We collect, retain and use personal data for our professional business purposes, including notifying you of job opportunities that may be of interest and sharing with our affiliates. We limit the personal data we collect to that which we believe is appropriate and necessary to manage applicants' needs, provide our services, and comply with applicable laws. Any information we collect in connection with your application will be treated in accordance with our internal policies and programs designed to protect personal data. Please see our privacy policy for additional information.

Get your free, confidential resume review.
or drag and drop your file here.
Similar jobs

Similar jobs worth comparing

Senior Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)
Senior Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)

Scale AI, Inc. • San Francisco (CA)

On-site
USD 216,000 - 270,000
Comprehensive health coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+1
Senior Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)
Senior Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)

Scale AI, Inc. • New York (NY)

On-site
USD 216,000 - 270,000
Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+2
Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)
Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)

Scale AI, Inc. • San Francisco (CA)

On-site
USD 216,000 - 270,000
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+2
Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)
Frontier Agents Engineer (Forward Deployed Engineering)

Scale AI, Inc. • New York (NY)

On-site
USD 216,000 - 270,000
Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+2
Senior Staff Forward Deployed AI Engineer, Enterprise
Senior Staff Forward Deployed AI Engineer, Enterprise

Scale AI • New York (NY), San Francisco (CA)

On-site
USD 288,000 - 360,000
Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+2
Staff Frontier Agents Engineer San Francisco, CA Apply →
Staff Frontier Agents Engineer San Francisco, CA Apply →

Scale AI, Inc. • New York (NY)

On-site
USD 252,000 - 315,000
Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Generous PTO
+1
Frontier Agents Engineer San Francisco, CA Apply →
Frontier Agents Engineer San Francisco, CA Apply →

Scale AI, Inc. • New York (NY)

On-site
USD 90,000 - 130,000
Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+2
Frontier Agent Engineering Manager, Enterprise
Frontier Agent Engineering Manager, Enterprise

Scale AI • San Francisco (CA)

On-site
USD 216,000 - 270,000
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+2
Senior Staff Frontier Agents Engineer San Francisco, CA Apply →
Senior Staff Frontier Agents Engineer San Francisco, CA Apply →

Scale AI, Inc. • New York (NY)

On-site
USD 288,000 - 360,000
Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend
+2
Senior Frontier Agent Engineering Manager, Enterprise
Senior Frontier Agent Engineering Manager, Enterprise

Scale AI • New York (NY)

On-site
USD 288,000 - 360,000
Comprehensive health coverage
Retirement benefits
Learning and development stipend