Founding Engineer / Forward Deployed / Herndon, VA (DC area)

An early-stage AI company in Herndon, VA is hiring a Founding Forward Deployed Software Engineer for a full-time position. This is a hybrid opportunity requiring three days per week onsite. You'll work across backend engineering, cloud infrastructure, and customer deployments using Go, Python, Kubernetes, AWS, and PostgreSQL.

This role sits directly between the engineering team and the customers using the platform. Rather than simply handing requirements to another team, you'll work with customers to understand their technical environments and production challenges, then design and build the functionality needed to solve them. You'll remain a core product engineer while getting direct exposure to how sophisticated organizations are actually deploying AI in production. It's a great fit for an engineer who enjoys ambiguous problems, customer interaction, and owning solutions from the initial conversation through production.
Required Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of software engineering experience
• Strong backend development experience with Go and/or Python
• Production experience with Kubernetes and AWS
• Experience building and deploying distributed systems
• Experience owning software from development through production
• Strong communication and customer-facing skills
• Ability to gather technical requirements and turn them into scalable software
• Comfortable troubleshooting complex production environments

Desired Skills & Experience

• Previous forward deployed or customer-facing engineering experience
• Experience working in startup or fast-paced engineering environments
• Experience with PostgreSQL
• Background in infrastructure, platform engineering, or developer tooling
• Experience with observability and production reliability
• Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure or MLOps

What You Will Be Doing
Tech Breakdown

• 35% Backend Software Engineering
• 25% Kubernetes / Cloud Infrastructure
• 20% Customer Integrations & Deployments
• 10% Production Reliability
• 10% Data / PostgreSQL

Daily Responsibilities

• 60% Hands On
• 30% Customer & Team Collaboration
• 10% Technical Leadership

The Offer

• Competitive base salary
• Bonus eligible
• Meaningful equity

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the US on a full-time basis now and in the future.

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