Principal Forward Deployed Engineer

Title: Principal Forward Deployed Engineer – AI & Customer-Facing Technical Leader

Location: Remote

Travel: Customer visits 4–5 days/month; occasional team gatherings

Salary:

€120–£170k base + package discussion

Tech: Python, JavaScript, Azure, AWS, AI, LLM's, RAG

Industry: AI Consultancy

The Role

We’re looking for talented Principal-level Forward Deployed Engineers to join our customer-facing AI practice. You’ll work directly with clients to uncover problems, build prototypes, and guide full AI-enabled solution lifecycles.

This is a role for engineers who:

• Enjoy building real software that makes a difference
• Are passionate about AI and its practical application
• Thrive at the intersection of technical leadership and client engagement

What You’ll Do

Customer-Facing Leadership

• Lead discovery workshops with technical and business stakeholders
• Represent the organisation’s technical capabilities in high-stakes client meetings
• Build trust and long-term relationships with engineering teams and decision-makers

Solution Development & Architecture

• Build and iterate working AI prototypes quickly
• Architect scalable, maintainable systems from prototype to production
• Make sophisticated technical decisions balancing AI innovation, quality, and deployment needs

Technical Mentorship & Team Growth

• Guide engineers through technical delivery, code reviews, and architectural discussions
• Elevate team capabilities through knowledge sharing, mentoring, and internal workshops
• Contribute to best practices, reusable components, and solution standards

AI Mastery & Innovation

• Implement AI solutions leveraging LLMs, foundation models, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems
• Design evaluation frameworks addressing bias, hallucination detection, and business impact
• Explore novel AI applications while integrating traditional ML techniques where appropriate

Who We’re Looking For

For Principal Engineers:

• 8+ years delivering complex, enterprise-grade software
• Full-stack development capability across modern technologies
• Client-facing experience or technical consulting skills
• AI curiosity and hands-on experimentation with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, GitHub Copilot
• Proven AI/ML expertise with production deployment experience
• Advanced knowledge of transformer architectures, foundation models, and prompt engineering
• Senior stakeholder engagement experience and ability to lead high-level AI strategy