We’re seeking an exceptional Applied AI Engineer / Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to build and deploy production LLM systems with enterprise customers. You’ll turn model capabilities into reliable software operating inside real organizations. The role sits at the intersection of product engineering, applied research, and customer delivery, shipping systems under compute, latency, and governance constraints while feeding field insights back into the platform and model roadmap. Systems developed in the field will later become core product capabilities across customers.
The Opportunity
As a Forward Deployed Engineer on our team, you’ll own the end-to-end lifecycle of enterprise model deployments. You will architect, build, and operate production systems while coordinating across customer engineering, security, IT, data, and business stakeholders as well as internal product and research teams.
Your work will span:
Multi-Workstream Technical Delivery: Work with customer engineering teams to translate business problems into production LLM systems, coordinating model development, tool integrations, evaluation systems, and deployment infrastructure.LLM Application Architecture: Design and ship advanced LLM systems including agent architectures, tool use pipelines, structured output workflows, caching layers, and fallback mechanismsProduction System Development: Implement end-to-end solutions including APIs, orchestration layers, tool connectors, retrieval systems, and user-facing integrations, while maintaining deployment infrastructure such as CI/CD pipelines, observability dashboards, and operational runbooksEvaluation, Safety & Reliability: Build bespoke evaluation harnesses and monitoring infrastructure including offline evaluation sets, regression gates, online quality metrics, and guardrail systems to ensure safe and reliable production behavior.Enterprise Data Integration: Design secure integrations with enterprise data systems and infrastructure, implementing authentication, authorization, auditability, and data-boundary controls while collaborating with security and infrastructure teams to meet enterprise requirementsAdoption & Field Strategy: Work closely with customer teams to drive production adoption through rollout planning, training, and change management, while synthesizing field insights into product and research feedback that shapes the technological development roadmap.What You'll Bring
BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics or equivalent practical experienceStrong programming ability with production experience in Python, with experience in systems languages such as C++, Rust, or C.Experience designing and implementing evaluation frameworks, monitoring systems, and reliability controls for AI systemsAbility to design systems end-to-end, spanning APIs, orchestration layers, reliability, latency constraints, and enterprise integrationsExperience building secure integrations with enterprise infrastructure including authentication, authorization, auditability, and data-boundary controlsStrong execution and ownership mindset; comfortable operating in ambiguous environments where requirements evolve rapidly.Ideal Candidates Will Also Have
Experience building reusable internal platforms, deployment tooling, or engineering playbooks that accelerate future deploymentsExperience operating AI systems in production environments with strict latency, compute, reliability, and governance constraintsExperience driving organizational adoption of AI systems, including stakeholder alignment, rollout planning, and impact measurementAbility to translate real-world deployment insights into product and research improvementsExperience delivering complex systems in regulated or high-stakes sectors such as financial services, healthcare, energy, government, or semiconductorsFamiliarity with MLOps-adjacent workflows, including model serving infrastructure, experiment tracking systems, or feature storesJoin us in building the next generation of multimodal AI systems that push boundaries while solving real-world problems!
Compensation
At Perceptron, we offer competitive benefits including:
For this role, a base salary of $180,000 to $250,000 + Equity (Please note: Starting salary may depend on location and level of experience)Medical, dental, and vision insurance; paid time off and company holidays; equity/stock options; in-office perks at our Bellevue, WA headquarters.Location: Bellevue, WAEQUAL OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT
Perceptron is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. All hiring decisions are based on qualifications, merit, and business need.
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If you’re excited to build, learn, and ship at the frontier of physical AGI—apply here.
