Principal Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 5, 2026. First seen by Alion on Nov 2, 2026.
Job Summary
Principal Engineer
Forward-Deployed Engineering Roles: That require deep platform understanding, ability to proactively identify future needs of clients and have good solution architecture knowledge.
Principal Forward Deployment Engineer
Job Summary
Lead end-to-end deployment of scalable Generative AI and agentic systems in complex customer environments. Partner closely with engineering, product, and platform teams to transform customer workflows into robust, production-grade solutions with strong evaluation practices, safety guardrails, observability, and operational reliability.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead customer-embedded deployments from discovery through pilot, stabilization, and full production rollout
- Design multi-agent workflows, enterprise-grade RAG pipelines, orchestration layers, and integration patterns
- Build evaluation harnesses, safety/ethical guardrails, monitoring dashboards, and failure-mode detection
- Optimize latency, throughput, reliability, and cost for LLM-powered applications at scale
- Diagnose and resolve issues across agents, APIs, data layers, and model-serving infrastructure
- Produce reusable architectural patterns, reference implementations, and platform feedback for product teams
- Work closely with security, governance, and platform engineering teams on responsible deployment practices
- Mentor Forward Deployment Engineers, guide design reviews, and set engineering quality bars
- Represent engineering in customer conversations, articulating tradeoffs, risks, and solution paths
Skill Requirements
- Strong Python engineering background
- Demonstrated experience building and deploying LLM/GenAI solutions
- Cloud architecture and deployment experience (Azure / AWS / GCP)
- Excellent client-facing communication and problem-solving skills
Other Requirements
- Experience with OpenAI / Anthropic / Azure OpenAI APIs
- Hands-on use of agent frameworks (AutoGen, CrewAI, LangGraph, etc.)
- Familiarity with vector databases (Pinecone, Chroma, FAISS, Weaviate)
- Prior Forward Deployment Engineering or applied AI deployment experience
- Knowledge of observability stacks, reliability engineering, and cost/perf tuning
Experience Requirements
Principal-level ownership of multiple customer deployments, driving solution design, integration, testing, evaluation, and stabilization. Leads design reviews, sets engineering and documentation standards, mentors teams, and ensures production-grade delivery across diverse customer environments.
Career Development & Mobility
This role sits at the intersection of architecture, engineering, and customer delivery, enabling progression into Solution/Technical Architecture, AI Platform Engineering, or Applied AI Research roles focused on agentic systems, evaluation frameworks, and scalable LLM integration. The strong customer-facing exposure also supports transitions into Product Strategy or FDE Leadership roles where deep platform knowledge, pattern design, and high-trust stakeholder engagement are essential.