{"id":765222,"url":"https://alion.io/job/lumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required","title":"Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (TS/SCI Clearance Required)","company":{"id":679123,"name":"Lumbra","domain":"lumbra.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/lumbra","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":83,"open_postings":9,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.667,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"Solutions","role_family":"Solutions","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Arlington, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":134000,"max_usd":275000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":556},"experience_years_min":6,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Anthropic","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-04T16:40:53Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-04","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T12:57:26Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":84,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":84},"description":"About Lumbra\nLumbra builds the vendor neutral operating system for agentic AI in high consequence environments. In our first ten months we won four fully competed prime contracts across the U.S. Government, every one of them deploying into classified spaces. We are live on JWICS. We were selected from a field of 200+ companies for a defense innovation challenge and won it. We beat two established defense primes on the same program and earned the follow-on, now in execution.\nAbout the Role\nNebula, our agentic harness, is deployed in classified environments across the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense.\nAs a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer you manage the team embedded at a customer site. You manage three to five people across both field roles, Forward Deployed Engineers and Deployment Strategists, you own the technical outcome for the engagement, and you serve as Lumbra's senior technical counterpart to the customer.\nThis role is on client site 80 to 100% of the time. It is not eligible for remote or hybrid work.\nHow the Role Is Structured\nWe publish the time allocation because it is the most common source of mismatch in senior field roles:\n40% engineering. You write code, configure agents, build workflows, and operate the platform.\n\n40% managing the team. Work assignment, performance, and growth for three to five direct reports across both field roles.\n\n20% customer engagement. Program office, end users, and government technical leadership.\n\nWhat You'll Own\nTechnical delivery for one engagement, from kickoff through operational acceptance and handoff.\n\nThe integration approach. You set it, and you translate mission requirements into platform configuration.\n\nA team of three to five Forward Deployed Engineers and Deployment Strategists: work assignment, performance, and development across both disciplines.\n\nEither lane, as the engagement demands. You cover FDE systems and integration work or DS workflow and agent design work, and you remain the most capable Nebula operator on the team.\n\nThe customer relationship on technical matters, including senior government technical leadership.\n\nThe workflows worth encoding. You work with your Deployment Strategists to identify the analyst workflows that matter, then build them in Nebula.\n\nHiring onto your own team. You will interview and select the engineers and strategists who report to you, including a forward deployed seat supporting a geographically separated element several time zones away.\n\nThe feedback loop to core engineering. Engagement learnings go back weekly, and they shape the roadmap.\n\nGovernment facing technical artifacts, including RFIs, RFPs, statements of work, and white papers.\n\nYou'll Work Alongside\nCIA officers, MIT engineers, Special Operations combat veterans, and applied AI engineers from frontier labs including Anthropic and Google. You will make decisions that immediately affect national security. You will own part of a company early and when it matters.\nWhat This Role Is Not\nA pure engineering role. Roughly 60% of the week is people management and customer engagement.\n\nA management role without hands-on work. You are expected to be the most capable Nebula operator on the team.\n\nA management of managers role. Your reports are individual contributors across both field roles.\n\nA role you can do from home. Your team sits at the customer site, and so do you.\n\nRequired Qualifications\n6+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time in customer facing or forward deployed technical roles.\n\nDemonstrated end to end ownership of a customer engagement: discovery, architecture, implementation, deployment, and adoption.\n\nStrong Python. Working fluency in Kubernetes, and the ability to reason independently about deployment, networking, and data flow.\n\nEnough AI agent and workflow fluency to direct Deployment Strategist work, not only engineering.\n\nExperience managing or formally mentoring engineers.\n\nWillingness to work on client site 80 to 100% of the time in the National Capital Region, plus periodic CONUS and OCONUS travel to supported units.\n\nU.S. citizenship and an active TS/SCI clearance.\n\nPreferred Qualifications\nPrior forward deployed or embedded engineering experience at a product company.\n\nExperience building or evaluating agentic systems and LLM applications, including handling non-deterministic behavior.\n\nExperience deploying and operating software in air-gapped or SCIF environments, including disconnected package management and offline container registries.\n\nPrior work with Intelligence Community or DoD tooling, data formats, or analytic workflows.\n\nFamiliarity with workflow orchestration such as Temporal for durable, multi-step tasks.\n\nExperience growing a team from one or two people into a functioning unit.\n\nWhat We Offer\nHealth, dental, and vision insurance. 99% of your premiums covered, and 100% of your dependents' premiums.\n\nOptional HSA plan. Lower premium, HSA eligible, fully portable, self directed or managed.\n\nHealth Reimbursement Account for qualified healthcare expenses.\n\nLife insurance of $150,000 plus AD&D, 100% company paid.\n\n401(k) with a 100% match on the first 6%, immediately vested. No cliff, no waiting period. Yours from day one.\n\nWellhub Gold. Everything from Gold's Gym to Lifetime, fully covered, plus [solidcore], F45, and hundreds of other studios.\n\nUnlimited PTO. Real time off, not accrual based. Take what you need, no counting required.\n\nEvery federal holiday, plus additional paid days off over the winter break.\n\nSupportive leave of absence program, including time off for military service, medical events, and parental leave.\n\nBreakfast, lunch, and endless snacks every day you are in the office.\n\nPre-tax commuter benefits.\n\nCompany phone plan. A new iPhone, fully company paid.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5808,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":6,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work","Life insurance","Parental leave","Unlimited PTO","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Agents","Defense AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-11T19:44:20Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":16,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.579,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":84,"expected_fill_days":32,"reasons":["conf:2","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/lumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/lumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-28T13:57:09Z","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":18958,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-29T00:00:00Z"}},"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":679123},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=679123"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Flumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required"},{"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%2Flumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required"},{"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%2Flumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required"},{"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/lumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Flumbra-lead-forward-deployed-engineer-tssci-clearance-required"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":765222}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"lumbra.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":765222},"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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