Principal Forward Deployed AI Engineer (Technical)

About the Company

Blackstraw.ai is an end-to-end technology services company specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Engineering solutions across Data Science, Data Engineering, LLM/GenAI and LLMOps. Founded in 2018, we help global enterprises across North America, Europe and Asia to build and operationalize AI systems that create measurable business impact. Our mission is to make AI adoption simpler, faster and scalable through a blend of deep domain expertise, reusable accelerators and proven engineering practices.

With a 600+ strong team of engineers, data scientists and AI specialists, we partner with organizations to deliver real-world outcomes in areas such as predictive analytics, computer vision, natural language processing and Generative AI. Headquartered in Florida (USA) with operations in Canada and India, Blackstraw.ai continues to empower global enterprises to unlock the true potential of AI.

Location: USA/ Canada

Type: Full‑time only

Experience: 10 to 20 years

About the Role

Blackstraw is looking for exceptional engineers who thrive at the intersection of technology, product, and customer impact.

This is not a traditional consulting role and it''s not an internal engineering role. You will work directly with Fortune 500 clients to solve some of their hardest AI, data, and platform engineering problems. You will challenge assumptions, design architectures, write production code, and help customers deploy systems that deliver measurable business outcomes.

You should be equally comfortable discussing multi-agent AI architectures with a CTO, debugging production Python code, or whiteboarding a distributed data platform with an engineering team.

If your favorite part of engineering is solving difficult problems - not managing status reports - this role is for you.

What You''ll Do

• Lead technical discovery with enterprise clients.

• Convert ambiguous business challenges into scalable technical solutions.

• Challenge customer assumptions and recommend better approaches backed by engineering judgment.

• Design production-grade AI, data, and cloud architectures.

• Build prototypes and production software using modern AI frameworks.

• Work alongside customer engineering teams as a hands-on technical leader.

• Drive architecture reviews, code reviews, and technical decision-making.

• Mentor Blackstraw engineering teams on best practices and emerging technologies.

• Help shape reusable platforms and accelerators from successful client engagements.

   

We''re Looking For

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.

• Deep expertise in Python and at least one compiled language (Java, Go, C#, or Rust).

• Production experience with LLMs, RAG, AI agents, vector databases, and modern AI application architectures.

• Strong experience with distributed systems, APIs, cloud-native architecture, and microservices.

• Experience building production systems on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.

• Ability to architect, build, debug, and optimize complex systems.

• Comfortable presenting to executives and working directly with customer engineering leadership.

• Strong communication skills with the confidence to respectfully challenge technical decisions.

Nice to Have

• Databricks, Snowflake, or modern data platform experience.

• Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, observability.

• Experience at product companies or high-growth startups.

• Contributions to open source or technical communities.

• Patents, publications, or conference speaking.

Success Looks Like

Within your first year, clients request you by name for strategic engagements. You help shape multiple enterprise AI implementations, mentor engineering teams, and create reusable assets that become part of Blackstraw''s delivery platform.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, IT, or equivalent experience.

Blackstraw provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, marital status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis as protected by federal, state, or local law