Senior Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Special Notice: This position is not contingent upon awarding of a project or needing a funding source. This is direct, full-time employment with webAI.

LOCATION

Austin, Texas or Washington D.C./Northern Virginia area preferred. Fully remote considered case-by-case. Up to 25% travel including occasional on-site at customer locations.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We're seeking a Senior Forward Deployed AI Engineer to support our Public Sector initiatives focused on building and optimizing production-ready AI systems for secure and distributed environments. This role sits at the intersection of machine learning, systems engineering, and deployment optimization, bridging research and real-world implementation.

You'll transform prototype models into scalable, efficient, and reliable production systems that operate seamlessly across a spectrum of hardware from government cloud infrastructure to edge devices in restricted or disconnected environments.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Collaborate with customers to scope, deploy, and maintain AI solutions in production environments
• Design, develop, and deploy agentic workflows to orchestrate multi-step reasoning, tool use, and decision-making across production systems
• Debug and optimize data pipelines and AI systems running on customer networks
• Translate ambiguous customer requirements into well-scoped technical solutions
• Work across the stack — from model inference on consumer hardware to infrastructure automation
• Read hardware schematics/logs to identify performance bottlenecks
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to enterprise clients

REQUIRED SKILLS

• 5+ years of combined experience in software engineering and machine learning
• Active US Security clearance
• Proven track record of deploying and maintaining ML/AI systems in production
• Strong expertise in ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, ONNX, JAX
• Experience debugging complex systems involving data pipelines, model inference, and hardware interaction
• Exceptional communication skills

PREFERRED

• Experience deploying models on edge devices or consumer hardware
• Familiarity with distributed systems, DevOps tooling, performance tuning
• Customer-facing engineering role experience
• Full-stack application development proficiency
• Knowledge of privacy-preserving AI and secure compute environments

BENEFITS

Competitive salary, comprehensive health/dental/vision, equity options, 401(k) match, $200/month Health & Wellness stipend, continuing education support, $500/year Function Health subscription, free parking, flexible time off, parental leave.