Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, AI-Native Public Sector Systems

Compensation: $175,000–$200,000 base + equity

Location: New York City — on-site, 5 days per week

Travel: Up to ~20%

Employment Type: Full-time

An early-stage AI-native software company modernizing the systems that power essential public services.

The Company

We’re partnering with a fast-growing technology company replacing fragmented government systems with configurable, AI-enabled software.

Rather than building frontier models, the team applies modern AI and strong software engineering to complex real-world workflows, legacy infrastructure, and mission-critical public services.

The Role

As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, you’ll own the technical final mile between a reusable core platform and each customer’s systems, data, and workflows.

You’ll work closely with Forward Deployed Product Managers to turn ambiguous requirements into secure, production-ready software — while identifying patterns that can be abstracted into reusable platform capabilities.

What You’ll Do

• Build and ship production software across customer deployments.
• Design integrations with legacy databases, APIs, on-premise systems, and operational workflows.
• Translate messy requirements into clear technical designs and working systems.
• Decide what should remain customer-specific versus become reusable platform functionality.
• Improve internal tooling, abstractions, and engineering primitives across deployments.
• Use AI coding tools to increase velocity without sacrificing technical judgment, security, or quality.
• Own software through production, including failures, edge cases, and reliability improvements.

What You’ll Bring

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience shipping meaningful systems end-to-end.
• Deep backend skills with solid instincts around architecture, APIs, databases, integrations, and reliability.
• Ability to move between high-level system design and detailed implementation.
• Strong product and technical judgment in ambiguous environments.
• Experience using AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, or similar.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• High ownership, low ego, and comfort operating at startup pace.
• US citizenship, required for certain government work.
• Ability to work in NYC five days per week.

Tech Stack

• AI-assisted engineering: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI
• SQL and legacy data systems
• APIs and complex integrations
• Single-tenant deployments
• Workflow and agentic orchestration
• Internal tooling and reusable software primitives

Why Join?

• Join early enough to shape architecture, tooling, and engineering culture.
• Solve varied technical problems across real-world public-sector systems.
• Work directly on software that reaches production and supports essential services.
• Combine meaningful technical ownership with strong startup upside and equity.

About People In AI

People In AI is a specialist recruitment partner connecting exceptional AI, machine learning, data, and engineering talent with ambitious technology companies worldwide.