{"id":4041715,"url":"https://alion.io/job/guidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead","title":"Forward Deployed AI Engineer Lead","company":{"id":4179,"name":"Guidehouse","domain":"guidehouse.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/guidehouse","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"services","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":134,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.769,"repost_share":0.022,"time_to_fill_p50_days":29,"computed_at":"2026-11-10T06:52:35Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Tysons, United States","United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":149000,"max":248000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":248000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"A2A","optional":false},{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Claude","optional":false},{"name":"Claude Code","optional":false},{"name":"Embeddings","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Structured Outputs","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"AWS Bedrock","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"Azure DevOps","optional":true},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":true},{"name":"Databricks","optional":true},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":true},{"name":"Hybrid Search","optional":true},{"name":"Knowledge Graph","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"LangChain","optional":true},{"name":"LangGraph","optional":true},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":true},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":true},{"name":"Reranking","optional":true},{"name":"Semantic Kernel","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true},{"name":"Vertex AI","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-10T22:23:13Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-10","last_verified_at":"2026-11-10T22:23:13Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Job Family:\nData Science ConsultingTravel Required:\nUp to 10%Clearance Required:\nAbility to Obtain Public TrustWhat You Will Do:\nAs a Forward Deployed AI Engineer Lead, you will work directly with clients and multidisciplinary delivery teams to turn complex business and mission needs into practical, production-ready AI solutions. You will operate at the intersection of AI, software engineering, data, and client delivery, moving quickly from ambiguous problems to working prototypes, integrated solutions, and scalable implementation patterns.\nThis role combines hands-on engineering, client-facing technical leadership, innovation, and team development. You will lead complex forward deployed engagements while helping build the next generation of Forward Deployed Engineers through hands-on mentorship, technical coaching, and repeatable engineering and delivery best practices.\nForward Deployed Engineering & Solution Delivery\nLead forward deployed engineering engagements, partnering directly with clients to understand complex workflows, identify high-value opportunities, and translate business and mission needs into working AI solutions.\nRapidly design, prototype, test, and deploy generative AI and agentic AI applications within complex enterprise environments.\nBuild advanced AI solutions using leading large language models, APIs, developer tooling, and enterprise AI platforms.\nTranslate ambiguous and evolving requirements into practical technical designs, prototypes, and production-ready solutions.\nDesign and implement agentic architectures incorporating Model Context Protocol (MCP), agent-to-agent (A2A) communication, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool use, structured outputs, orchestration, context management, and human review where appropriate.\nLead technical discovery sessions, architecture discussions, demonstrations, and hands-on solution working sessions with client stakeholders.\nPartner directly with users throughout implementation to gather feedback, diagnose challenges, refine solutions, and drive adoption.\nIdentify innovative and practical ways to apply emerging AI capabilities to complex client challenges while balancing usability, performance, security, maintainability, and responsible AI.\nEngineering & Integration\nArchitect, build, and maintain integrations with internal and external systems using APIs, services, data pipelines, and modern application development practices.\nDesign AI applications and agents that interact with enterprise data, tools, business systems, APIs, and other agents.\nDesign and implement MCP-based integrations connecting AI applications and agents with enterprise tools, services, and data sources.\nDesign and implement A2A and multi-agent patterns enabling specialized agents to coordinate and communicate as part of broader workflows.\nDesign and implement RAG solutions, including enterprise knowledge retrieval, embeddings, vector search, grounding, and related retrieval patterns.\nApply modern software engineering practices to move solutions from rapid prototype through testing, deployment, and operational support.\nWork with relational databases, vector stores, retrieval systems, APIs, and related data patterns to support application state, knowledge retrieval, traceability, and auditability.\nImplement testing, evaluation, logging, monitoring, and observability for AI-enabled applications and agentic workflows.\nDiagnose complex technical and integration issues across applications, models, agents, APIs, data, and infrastructure.\nEstablish reusable technical patterns and accelerators that improve the quality and speed of future implementations.\nClient & Technical Leadership\nServe as a trusted senior technical advisor to clients on complex generative AI and agentic AI initiatives.\nBuild relationships with technical, business, data, and leadership stakeholders, connecting client needs with practical technical solutions.\nCommunicate complex technical concepts, solution options, risks, and trade-offs clearly to technical teams, business stakeholders, and senior client leaders.\nFacilitate technical discovery and working sessions that turn ambiguous client problems into actionable engineering decisions and solution approaches.\nPresent prototypes, solution demonstrations, architecture decisions, and technical recommendations to client stakeholders.\nAsk effective questions, listen to client needs, and adapt technical approaches based on business, mission, user, and technology considerations.\nChallenge assumptions constructively and propose innovative approaches when conventional solutions do not adequately address the problem.\nBalance rapid experimentation and creative problem-solving with the engineering discipline required to deliver reliable, secure, maintainable, and scalable solutions.\nFDE Capability Building & Mentorship\nMentor and develop junior and mid-level engineers into effective Forward Deployed Engineers, building both their technical engineering skills and client-facing delivery capabilities.\nCoach team members on FDE best practices, including technical discovery, problem decomposition, requirements translation, rapid prototyping, solution design, client communication, demonstrations, implementation, troubleshooting, and knowledge transfer.\nProvide hands-on technical direction, architecture guidance, code review, pairing, and engineering mentorship.\nDevelop and promote reusable FDE playbooks, engineering standards, solution patterns, accelerators, and implementation best practices.\nCoach team members on modern agentic AI engineering patterns, including MCP, A2A, RAG, tool use, orchestration, evaluation, and responsible AI practices.\nHelp engineers become comfortable operating in ambiguous client environments and moving independently from problem identification through working solution.\nCreate opportunities for junior team members to progressively assume responsibility for technical discovery, client discussions, demonstrations, solution ownership, and technical leadership.\nFoster a culture of experimentation, continuous learning, collaboration, technical excellence, and responsible AI development.\nCapture and share lessons learned across engagements to continuously improve FDE practices and delivery quality.\n What You Will Need:\nMust be able to OBTAIN and MAINTAIN a Federal PUBLIC TRUST;. Candidates with an ACTIVE PUBLIC TRUST or SUITABILITY are preferred.\nSEVEN (7+) or more years of overall work experience.\nExperience in software engineering, data engineering, AI/ML engineering, solution engineering, or a related technical role.\nExperience working as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Forward Deployed AI Engineer, or in a comparable client-embedded engineering role, including translating ambiguous client requirements into working technical solutions.\nHands-on experience designing and building generative AI, large language model, or agentic AI solutions.\nHands-on experience developing solutions using Claude APIs, Claude for Enterprise, Claude Code, tool use, Custom Skills, or comparable enterprise large language model platforms and developer tooling.\nHands-on experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and its use in connecting AI applications or agents with tools, services, data sources, or enterprise systems.\nHands-on experience with agent-to-agent (A2A) and multi-agent solution patterns, including communication or coordination among specialized agents.\nHands-on experience designing and implementing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions, including enterprise knowledge retrieval, embeddings, vector search, and grounding LLM applications with authoritative data or content.\nHands-on experience designing agentic AI solutions using tool use, structured outputs, context management, orchestration, and human-in-the-loop patterns.\nStrong software engineering experience using modern programming languages, APIs, services, and application development frameworks.\nExperience integrating AI applications and agents with enterprise systems, databases, APIs, tools, and data sources.\nExperience developing reliable, maintainable, testable, and well-documented production code.\nDemonstrated experience mentoring and developing engineers, including coaching team members on engineering standards, technical problem-solving, solution delivery, and client-facing responsibilities.\nStrong client communication and consulting skills, with demonstrated ability to work effectively with technical teams, business stakeholders, and senior client leaders.\nDemonstrated ability to lead technical discovery and translate ambiguous business or mission problems into actionable technical requirements and working solutions.\nDemonstrated experience leading complex technical implementations and providing technical direction to engineering or multidisciplinary teams.\nDemonstrated ability to think innovatively, challenge conventional approaches, rapidly evaluate emerging technologies, and develop creative technical solutions to complex or undefined problems.\nStrong written, verbal, presentation, facilitation, and interpersonal communication skills, including the ability to communicate technical concepts, architecture decisions, risks, recommendations, and trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences.\nWhat Would Be Nice To Have:\nBachelor’s degree from an accredited university.\nMaster’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field.\nExperience delivering AI, data, or software solutions within Federal Government, healthcare, financial services, or other highly regulated environments.\nExperience deploying generative AI and agentic solutions on major cloud and enterprise AI platforms such as Microsoft Azure / Azure OpenAI, AWS / Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud / Vertex AI, Databricks, or comparable platforms.\nExperience with modern AI and agent development frameworks and patterns, such as LangGraph, LangChain, Semantic Kernel, or comparable orchestration frameworks.\nExperience operationalizing generative AI solutions, including LLM evaluation, tracing, observability, prompt and model management, guardrails, cost optimization, and production monitoring.\nExperience designing secure AI architectures incorporating identity and access management, secrets management, API security, data protection, authorization, auditability, and responsible AI controls.\nExperience working with containers, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and cloud-native deployment patterns, including technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or Terraform.\nExperience with knowledge graphs, graph databases, advanced retrieval techniques, hybrid search, reranking, or other approaches that improve the quality and reliability of enterprise RAG solutions.\nExperience developing reusable AI accelerators, reference architectures, engineering frameworks, or platform capabilities that can be applied across multiple teams or client engagements.\nExperience contributing to technical strategy, solution architecture, estimation, proposal development, technical demonstrations, or client pursuit activities.\nRelevant cloud, AI, data, or security certifications.\nActive Federal Public Trust, Secret, or higher-level security clearance.\nThe annual salary range for this position is $149,000.00-$248,000.00. Compensation decisions depend on a wide range of factors, including but not limited to skill sets, experience and training, security clearances, licensure and certifications, and other business and organizational needs. What We Offer:\nGuidehouse offers a comprehensive, total rewards package that includes competitive compensation and a flexible benefits package that reflects our commitment to creating a diverse and supportive workplace.\nBenefits include:\nMedical, Rx, Dental & Vision Insurance\n\nPersonal and Family Sick Time & Company Paid Holidays\n\nPosition may be eligible for a discretionary variable...","description_format":"text","description_chars":14553,"description_truncated":true,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Continuous learning","Parental leave","Retirement plans","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Digital Government","IT Consulting & Digital Transformation","Management Consulting"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-10T22:23:13Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"adverts_offering_sponsorship_24m":0,"sanctioned_now":false,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 63 · green card filings: 27","filings_12m":63,"filings_prev_12m":57,"green_card_filings_12m":27,"median_offered_wage_usd":128889,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-11-10T11:34:35+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":29}],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:1","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-11T00:07:28Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":248000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/guidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/guidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-11T00:07:28Z","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":356,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-12T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"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":4179},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4179"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fguidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"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%2Fguidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"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%2Fguidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead"},{"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/guidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fguidehouse-forward-deployed-ai-engineer-lead"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4041715}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"guidehouse.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4041715},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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