Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Senior Forward Deployed Engineer IG Labs: AI Built & Deployed at Scale | Insight Global Company: IG Labs Title: Senior Forward Deployed Engineer Location: Remote with travel to Atlanta, GA Duration: Permanent Pay: $125,000 - $225,000/yr Job Description IG Labs is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to lead technical workstreams within complex client engagements. This position is ideal for an AI-native engineer who can translate ambiguous business challenges into clearly defined technical requirements and production-ready solutions. The Senior Forward Deployed Engineer will build, configure, and extend AI-powered solutions directly within client environments. This person will own delivery from discovery and solution design through development, deployment, adoption, and continuous improvement. Success requires strong software engineering fundamentals, practical AI and machine learning knowledge, deep agentic AI experience, and the ability to communicate effectively with technical and business stakeholders. Key Responsibilities Own one or more client workstreams from discovery and scoping through development, deployment, and adoption.Translate loosely defined client challenges into practical technical requirements and implementation plans.Build and configure agent workflows, data pipelines, system integrations, and AI-powered applications.Serve as the technical authority for assigned workstreams and collaborate with technical architects on broader architectural decisions.Develop clean, well-tested, and maintainable solutions that other engineers can support and extend.Design and optimize relational and non-relational data models, schemas, indexes, queries, APIs, and services.Build production-grade agentic AI systems using orchestration, tool calling, retrieval-augmented generation, context engineering, memory, and state management.Establish evaluation methods, guardrails, observability, and deployment practices for AI-enabled systems.Manage solution performance, cost, latency, reliability, and security within live client environments.Deliver working solutions rapidly, validate them with users, and refine them based on feedback.Identify reusable technical patterns, components, and frameworks that can accelerate future engagements.Contribute production-ready assets, accelerators, and intellectual property to the company’s internal library.Mentor junior engineers through code reviews, pairing sessions, and hands-on coaching.Set a high standard for code quality, documentation, technical delivery, and client communication.Participate in prospect discussions, technical discovery, solution scoping, proposals, and statements of work.Assess prospective engagements for technical feasibility, delivery risk, and team alignment.Contribute to technical interviews, internal knowledge sharing, lessons learned, and practice development. Qualifications At least five years of hands-on software engineering experience with a demonstrated record of delivering production systems.Strong system design expertise, including databases, data modeling, schema design, indexing, query optimization, transactions, and consistency.Fluency in a general-purpose programming language and a strong command of data structures, algorithms, APIs, testing, and service design.Experience designing systems with maintainability, scalability, reliability, concurrency, and extensibility in mind.Strong understanding of traditional AI and machine learning concepts, including transformers, convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, attention, tokenization, model training, inference, loss functions, evaluation, overfitting, and regularization.Deep working knowledge of embedding spaces, vector similarity, dimensionality, semantic retrieval, clustering, and matching.Hands-on experience building and deploying production-grade agentic AI systems, beyond proofs of concept or demonstrations.Experience with AI orchestration, tool and function calling, retrieval-augmented generation, context engineering, memory, state, multi-step planning, evaluation, and guardrails.Deep expertise in at least one specialization, such as AI and machine learning, data engineering, full-stack development, analytics and business intelligence, or DevOps.Demonstrated ability to work directly with clients, customers, or external stakeholders.Experience succeeding in ambiguous, fast-moving environments such as consulting, professional services, systems integration, or startups.Strong written and verbal communication skills.Experience mentoring junior engineers and providing constructive technical guidance. Preferred Qualifications Experience developing retrieval-augmented generation architectures, LLM orchestration frameworks, evaluation harnesses, and agent observability solutions.Familiarity with Model Context Protocol.Experience fine-tuning or adapting models.Experience designing and operating vector stores at scale.Background in technology consulting, professional services, or systems integration.Experience working with distributed or offshore delivery teams.Experience contributing to reusable technical assets, accelerator repositories, or intellectual property libraries.Experience delivering solutions within regulated industries, including financial services, healthcare, or insurance.Familiarity with AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.Experience supporting technical pre-sales, engagement scoping, proposals, or statements of work. Core Competencies Technical depthClient partnershipProblem decompositionDelivery accountabilityAI solution engineeringIntellectual property mindsetSelf-managementMentorshipClear communication