Forward Deployed Engineer, Lead - AI Engineer
Lead Reflection's Forward Deployed Engineering function, owning end-to-end delivery of enterprise agentic AI applications from pre-sales discovery through production across cloud, VPC, and on-prem environments. Day-to-day blends hands-on building of LLM/RAG/agent systems (Python, TypeScript, Docker, Kubernetes) with model fine-tuning, customer-facing solution architecture, and scaling the team.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- San Francisco, United States
- Work setup
- Onsite
- Seniority
- Lead
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 2+ years
- Category
- Ai engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Strong software engineering background shipping production-grade systems (Python, TypeScript)
- Deploying enterprise software in cloud or hybrid environments with modern DevOps practices (Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD)
- Deep understanding of ML concepts and hands-on experience with modern AI stacks (vector databases, RAG pipelines, agent orchestration, evaluations, fine-tuning)
- 6+ years software engineering experience, including 2+ years in technical leadership delivering AI-driven enterprise solutions
- Ability and interest to work in customer-facing environments, architecting solutions for real business problems
- Self-starter with high agency and ownership, excelling in fast-paced startup environments
Full description
Our Mission
Reflection is a research lab making intelligence open and accessible for everyone to use, customize, and build on. We build open models that let anyone control their intelligence and help shape the future of AI. Our mission: make intelligence open and accessible to all.
Role Overview
We’re seeking an exceptional technical lead to build and scale Reflection’s Forward Deployed Engineering function within the AI Solutions team. This team plays a critical role in bridging our cutting-edge AI research with real-world enterprise deployments. As a Forward Deployed Engineer Lead, you will own the end-to-end technical strategy, execution, and delivery of complex agentic applications, from early pre-sales discovery through production deployment.
What You'll Do
- Partner with Deployment Strategists and Sales to understand enterprise customer needs, architect solutions, and develop transformative agentic applications.
- Architect and build complex agentic systems using state-of-the-art models, orchestrating sophisticated LLM workflows and integrating deeply with enterprise infrastructure.
- Collaborate with research teams to adapt and fine-tune models for customer-specific needs, contributing to our internal codebase for inference, fine-tuning, and evaluation.
- Own end-to-end deployments across hybrid environments (public cloud, VPC, and on-premises), ensuring production-grade scalability, performance, and reliability.
- Shape and scale the Forward Deployed Engineering organization by defining playbooks, best practices, technical standards, and mentorship to support team growth.
What We're Looking For
- Strong software engineering background with experience shipping production-grade systems (Python, Typescript)
- Proven track record of deploying enterprise software in cloud or hybrid environments using modern DevOps practices (Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD).
- Deep understanding of machine learning concepts and hands-on experience with modern AI stacks, including vector databases, RAG pipelines, agent orchestration, evaluations, and fine-tuning.
- 6+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years in a technical leadership capacity delivering AI-driven enterprise solutions (e.g., Lead Forward Deployed Engineer, Tech Lead, or Engineering Manager).
- Demonstrated ability and interest to work in customer-facing environments, understanding user needs, architecting solutions for real business problems, and delivering tangible outcomes.
- Self-starter with high agency and ownership, excelling in fast-paced startup environments where playbooks are still being written.