{"id":2649787,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca","title":"Forward Deployed AI Engineer | San Diego, CA","company":{"id":4423642,"name":"Cadre AI","domain":"cadre.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/cadre-4","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Gem","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Diego, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":100000,"max":140000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":140000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Anthropic","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Claude","optional":false},{"name":"Claude Code","optional":false},{"name":"Cursor","optional":false},{"name":"ETL/ELT","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Gemini","optional":false},{"name":"Llama","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Next.js","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI Codex","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"React.js","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"Voice Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"DSPy","optional":true},{"name":"FastAPI","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"Langfuse","optional":true},{"name":"LiteLLM","optional":true},{"name":"pgvector","optional":true},{"name":"Supabase","optional":true},{"name":"Vercel","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-05T00:19:46Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-21T15:07:34Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":77,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":77},"description":"About Cadre AI\nCadre AI is an AI strategy and integration firm that builds production AI systems for B2B companies in private equity, wholesale lending, real estate, and SaaS. We don’t build decks about what AI could do. We ship systems that move revenue, compress costs, and automate the work that used to take entire teams.\nThe Role\nThe Forward Deployed AI Engineer is a critical role at Cadre AI. You are the person in the room with the client, the person writing the code, and the person architecting the system. There is no handoff between “strategy” and “execution.” You own both.\nYou will embed directly with our clients to understand their operations, identify the highest-leverage AI opportunities, and then build and ship production systems that deliver measurable results. One week you might be designing an LLM pipeline that processes financial documents. The next, you’re standing up a voice agent for a construction company or building a revenue operations engine for a hardware manufacturer scaling globally.\nThis role is AI-first in how you work, not just what you build. You use Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and whatever tools let you ship quality code at a pace that would be impossible without them. Speed and quality are not tradeoffs here. They’re both the expectation.\nWhat You’ll Do\nOwn Client Delivery End-to-End\nEmbed with clients across private equity, lending, real estate, and SaaS to map their operations and identify the AI use cases that will move the business\nRun discovery sessions, translate business pain into technical architecture, scope the work, and then build it yourself\nPresent to C-suite stakeholders, translating complex trade-offs into clear decisions with measurable expected outcomes\nManage client relationships as a trusted technical partner, not a vendor. Clients should feel like you’re part of their team\nBuild and Ship Production AI Systems\nArchitect and deploy LLM/RAG pipelines, agent orchestration systems, conversational AI, document intelligence, and predictive analytics\nUse AI-native development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) to write, review, and iterate on production code at startup speed\nBuild evaluation frameworks, regression suites, and observability layers that prove your systems work and catch when they don’t\nConvert proofs-of-concept into stable, monitored production services. The demo is not the deliverable. The running system is\nDesign and enforce data quality rules, ETL pipelines, and secure cloud deployments across AWS, GCP, and Azure\nDrive Strategy and Scale the Practice\nContribute to Cadre’s 8-pillar AI transformation framework, turning field learnings into repeatable playbooks\nIdentify patterns across engagements and build reusable components, prompt libraries, and architecture templates that accelerate future pods\nScout emerging models, tools, and research (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Llama, open-source). Run experiments and share what works with the team\nMentor junior engineers through pair programming, design reviews, and hands-on coaching\nWho You Are\n3+ years building software, with 2+ years focused on AI/ML systems in production (not notebooks, not proofs-of-concept)\nYou have shipped LLM-powered products to real users and understand the gap between a working demo and a reliable system\nHands-on with modern LLMs, RAG architectures, agent frameworks, and prompt engineering. You have opinions about when to use each and you can defend them\nFluent in Typescript & Python and comfortable across the stack (React/Next.js, PostgreSQL, cloud infrastructure). You can build a full application, not just a model\nExceptional communicator who can whiteboard architecture with engineers in the morning and present ROI to a CFO in the afternoon\nAI-native in how you work. You actively use AI coding tools to multiply your output and you’re always testing new ones\nComfortable with ambiguity. You can walk into a client engagement with a vague problem statement and leave with a concrete plan\nStrong judgment about when to use prompt engineering vs. RAG vs. fine-tuning vs. classical ML based on the actual constraints (data, latency, budget, timeline)\nWhat Sets You Apart\nFormer founder, early startup engineer, or someone who has operated like one inside a larger org. You know what it means to own the entire problem\nTrack record of deploying AI systems that moved a business KPI, not just a model metric. You can point to the revenue gained, cost saved, or time eliminated\nExperience in consulting, professional services, or client-facing engineering where you had to earn trust and deliver under pressure\nYou’ve led end-to-end launches of agent-based or LLM systems at production scale, including the unglamorous work of error analysis, edge case handling, and monitoring\nActive in the AI community. You write, speak, contribute to open source, or build in public. You’re a practitioner, not a spectator\nDomain experience in financial services, real estate, lending, or B2B SaaS\nOur Tech Stack\nAI & LLM\nLiteLLM, DSPy, Langfuse, Claude, GPT, custom agent frameworks\nBackend\nTypescript, Python, FastAPI\nFrontend\nReact, Next.js, Vercel\nData\nPostgreSQL with pgvector, Supabase\nInfrastructure\nAWS, Render (PaaS), Docker\nDev Tools\nClaude Code, Cursor, GitHub\nWhy Cadre AI\nReal ownership. You will not be writing tickets for someone else to build. You scope it, build it, ship it, and see the impact with your own eyes\nVariety and velocity. Every engagement is a different industry, a different problem, and a new chance to build something that matters. You won’t get bored\nAI-native culture. We don’t just build AI for clients. We use it to run our own operations. You’ll work with people who are as obsessed with the tools as you are\nAccess to the frontier. Through our partnerships with Anthropic, OpenAI, and YC, you’ll be among the first to experiment with new models and capabilities\nUpside. We’re a bootstrapped, profitable, fast-growing company. Early team members share in the success they help create\n No bureaucracy. Small pods. Clear accountability. The best idea wins, regardless of who says it\nCadre AI is building the future of how companies adopt and operate AI. We believe the best AI systems come from engineers who understand both the technology and the business it serves. If that’s how you think, we want to talk.\nCompensation\nThe base pay range for this role is $100,000 - $140,000 per year.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6396,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Real Estate"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-15T21:19:48Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":11,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.398,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":77,"expected_fill_days":22,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-21T05:46:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":140000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-21T16:01:31Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":22677,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4423642},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4423642"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcadre-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-san-diego-ca"}]}