AI Field Engineer / Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)
A hands-on forward-deployed engineer at an AI inference platform who works directly with AI-native customers to turn LLM/generative AI challenges into production systems — building POCs, MVPs, and integrations in Python and deploying workloads with tools like vLLM, Kubernetes, and cloud AI platforms.
- Compensation
- $176K–$228K / yr
- Location
- New York, US
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Category
- Solutions engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 3–10 years of experience in a client-facing technical or AI/ML engineering role
- Strong Python programming skills
- Experience building and deploying AI/ML or generative AI applications
- Experience working with LLMs and/or open-source AI models
- Ability to work directly with customers and communicate technical concepts clearly
- Experience building POCs and taking solutions toward production
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to operate effectively in ambiguous environments
- Willingness to work hands-on across engineering, customer delivery, and product
Nice to have
- Experience with vLLM
- Experience with SGLang
- Experience with TensorRT-LLM
- Experience with Kubernetes
- Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP
- Experience with AWS Bedrock / SageMaker
- Experience with Azure AI Foundry
- Experience with GCP Vertex AI
- LLM fine-tuning experience, including SFT, DPO, or RFT
- GPU infrastructure experience
- Model inference and optimization experience
Full description
Location: New York, NY / San Mateo, CA / Remote, USA
Employment Type: Full-time
Experience: 3–10 years
Compensation: $176K–$228K base | $220K–$285K OTE + meaningful equity
Visa: H-1B transfers and TN visas sponsored; O-1 considered case-by-case
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About the Role
We’re hiring an AI Field Engineer / Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to join our AI’s high-velocity team
You’ll work directly with ambitious AI-native companies to turn complex AI challenges into production-ready systems. This is a highly hands-on role sitting at the intersection of AI engineering, product, and customer delivery.
You’ll build POCs, MVPs, and production integrations while working directly with customers, account executives, and engineering teams. You’ll also engage with technical and executive stakeholders to discuss architecture, strategy, and business outcomes.
This is not a traditional consulting or solutions role you’ll be hands-on-keyboard, writing code, deploying systems, solving technical problems, and contributing directly to our products and platform.
What You’ll Do
- Work directly with customers to understand their technical and business challenges.
- Design and build POCs, MVPs, and production AI applications.
- Deploy and optimize LLM and generative AI workloads in production.
- Work with open-source models, inference infrastructure, and AI/ML platforms.
- Collaborate with customer engineering teams, account executives, and Fireworks product/engineering teams.
- Translate customer requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Troubleshoot complex AI, infrastructure, and deployment challenges.
- Communicate technical architecture and tradeoffs to both engineers and executive stakeholders.
- Contribute code and product improvements directly to the codebase.
- Turn customer learnings into product feedback and help shape our roadmap.
- Take ownership of projects from initial discovery through production deployment.
What We’re Looking For
We’re looking for engineers who combine strong technical depth with excellent customer-facing skills.
You may come from backgrounds such as:
- Forward Deployed Engineer