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Salary: USD 148,750 - 201,250 / annual
Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed AI Engineer to embed with defense and national security customers as a technical partner, owning solutions from problem discovery through production deployment. This is a customer-facing, delivery-focused role centered on backend engineering, data pipelines, and retrieval systems that power agentic and generative AI capabilities on the Unified Defense Stack platform.
Key responsibilities include embedding with strategic customers as a technical partner and owning the full arc from problem discovery through solution delivery and adoption. You will architect, build, and deploy backend systems powering generative AI: APIs, data processing pipelines, integration layers, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and context engineering patterns. You'll deploy and operate systems across cloud, on-premises, and air-gapped environments using Defense Unicorns' core platform and delivery patterns.
You will scope and sequence delivery by defining roadmaps, setting priorities, making speed/quality/scope tradeoffs, and removing blockers across internal teams and customer stakeholders. You'll codify reusable patterns for mission environments through tooling, internal frameworks, and playbooks that accelerate future deployments. As the technical face to customer leadership, you'll translate complex technical work for non-technical stakeholders, build trust, and drive adoption.
You'll carry field insights back to product and engineering teams to improve the platform based on production realities, and prototype and validate new capabilities using core products and design patterns.
Required: 4+ years backend or full-stack engineering with production Python; experience designing and operating data pipelines, APIs, and integration layers; hands-on work with information retrieval systems (keyword search, vector search, document parsing, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch); working knowledge of RAG patterns or applied generative AI in production; experience deploying software in government, defense, or regulated environments; strong communication skills translating technical work for non-technical stakeholders; comfort with ambiguity and shifting priorities; eligibility for U.S. security clearance; U.S. citizenship required.
Preferred: Kubernetes deployment in air-gapped/classified environments; familiarity with open-source LLMs (Llama, Mixtral, Gemma, Phi); LLM evaluation framework experience; document processing pipeline background; active security clearance (Secret or above); prior customer-facing or forward-deployed engineering experience.
Travel: Up to 25%, flexible based on engagement needs.
