Forward Deployed Engineer

Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (Active TS/SCI Required)

Location: Arlington, VA (On-Site)

Type: Full-Time

Compensation: $220,000 - $250,000 plus bonus

AGF Talent is leading the search for a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer on behalf of a fast-growing company building AI platforms for high-consequence government environments.

The Opportunity

This organization is looking for a hands-on technical leader to run point on one of its most important customer engagements. It's a rare role that blends real engineering, real people leadership, and direct impact on national security missions, all in one seat. If you like being in the room where decisions get made, writing code that matters, and building a team you're proud of, this is your next move.

This company builds AI platforms for high-consequence government environments and has grown quickly, winning competitively awarded federal contracts and standing up work in classified networks. The team brings together backgrounds from intelligence, elite engineering, and military service.

What You'll Be Doing

This role sits at the center of a customer engagement, from kickoff to full operational adoption. Expect your week to break down roughly like this:

• Building (about 40%): Writing code, configuring intelligent agents, and standing up workflows directly on the platform.
• Leading (about 40%): Managing a team of 3-5 engineers and strategists, owning hiring, performance, and growth.
• Partnering (about 20%): Serving as the senior technical voice with program leadership and end users on the customer side.

You'll set the integration strategy, translate mission needs into working systems, and make sure your team is solving the problems that actually move the needle. You'll also help hire your own team, including a role supporting a partner element in a different time zone, and you'll feed lessons learned back to the core engineering group every week to help shape what gets built next.

This is a client-site role, roughly 80-100% of the time, with occasional domestic and international travel to supported teams. It's not a remote or hybrid position, and it's not a "manage from a distance" job either. You're expected to be the most capable operator on your own team.

What You Bring

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful time in customer-facing or embedded technical roles
• Must have an active TS/SCI clearance and US citizenship
• A track record of owning a customer engagement end to end: discovery, architecture, build, deployment, and adoption
• Strong Python skills and working fluency in Kubernetes, with the ability to reason independently about deployment, networking, and data flow
• Enough fluency in AI agents and automated workflows to guide strategy work, not just write code
• Experience formally managing or mentoring engineers
• Willingness to work on-site in the Washington, DC Metro region, with periodic domestic and international travel

Nice to Have

• Prior experience in an embedded or forward-deployed engineering role at a product company
• Background building or evaluating AI agent systems and large language model applications, including managing unpredictable model behavior
• Experience operating software in air-gapped or highly secure environments
• Exposure to Intelligence Community or DoD data formats and analytic workflows
• Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools like Temporal
• A history of growing a small team into a high-functioning unit

What's In It For You

• Competitive base salary of $220,000-$250,000
• Equity in a fast-growing company with real upside as the business scales
• Full benefits package
• Unlimited paid time off
• A seat alongside a genuinely exceptional team, with real ownership over outcomes from day one