Forward Deployed Backend AI Engineer
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Seattle, WA
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Ai engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Five or more years building backend systems in production, with strong software engineering fundamentals.
- Deep experience with data pipelines, APIs, and integrating disparate systems.
- Hands-on experience building with modern AI and ML systems, including LLMs and retrieval.
- Strong Python skills, plus fluency in at least one other backend language.
- Experience with distributed systems, databases, and cloud infrastructure.
- A track record of shipping reliable software under real deadlines.
- Care for security and data protection as part of how you build.
Nice to have
- Experience deploying software at customer sites in a forward deployed or professional-services-adjacent model.
- Familiarity with knowledge graphs, vector databases, and retrieval-augmented generation.
- Experience integrating CRM, AMS, or knowledge-platform systems.
- Comfort working directly with customer engineering and security teams.
- Exposure to neuro-symbolic or agentic AI systems.
Full description
About Sapience AI
Sapience AI is the collective intelligence platform for professional communities. We sit above the CRMs, AMS platforms, and knowledge bases that organizations already run, and we turn the expertise scattered across them into something every member can search, act on, and share.
The intelligence a community needs is already inside it. Most organizations just cannot reach it. Knowledge lives in silos, in legacy systems, in the heads of a few experts, and in fragmented records no one can connect. We change that.
Our work is grounded in four commitments: technology elevates people and never replaces them, the best expertise is already inside the community, everything is built on trust, and every deployment is purpose-driven for the organization it serves.
Let’s achieve more, together.
Where this role sits
This is a hands-on backend engineering role that ships in the customer’s world. You embed with a customer, understand their systems and data, and build the backend that connects Sapience AI to their reality.
You take MINERVA and the COGENT architecture from a general platform to a working deployment: the pipelines that bring a community’s knowledge in, the services that connect to their CRM, AMS, and knowledge base, and the integrations that make collective intelligence real on their data.
You work in the field, close to the problem, with the speed that a customer deployment demands and the discipline that production and trust require.
Why this role exists
Every professional community stores its expertise differently. The value of collective intelligence depends on reaching that expertise where it actually lives, across systems that were never designed to connect.
General platforms do not deploy themselves. Someone has to build the backend that meets each customer where they are, fast, without cutting the corners that protect their data.
The Forward Deployed Backend AI Engineer is that builder. You turn a deployment from a plan into working software running against the customer’s systems, and you feed what you learn back so the core platform gets better for everyone.
What you will own (Areas of Responsibility)
You hold seven areas of responsibility inside the forward deployed team. Each one is yours to set direction on, build, and measure.
1. Deployment backend and integrations
- Build the backend services and integrations that connect Sapience AI to a customer’s CRM, AMS, knowledge base, and identity systems.
- Design data pipelines that bring a community’s knowledge into the platform reliably and keep it current.
- Ship production-grade services under the time pressure of a live deployment, without sacrificing correctness.