# Forward Deployed AI Engineer

**Company:** [Distyl AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/distyl-ai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY
**Role:** Solutions Architecture
**Salary:** $150k – $250k/yr
**Experience:** 2+ years
**Skills:** Python, LLMs, AI Agents, Prompt Engineering, Retrieval Systems, Evaluation Frameworks, Production Systems, Debugging, System Integration, Observability
**Posted:** 2026-06-18

> Forward Deployed AI Engineer building and operating production AI systems in customer environments. Requires 2+ years software engineering experience, hands-on LLM/AI system building, strong Python fundamentals, and willingness to travel 10-30%.

## Job Description

## Key Responsibilities
- Build and operate AI systems deployed in customer environments, taking ownership of system behavior, reliability, and usefulness in production
- Design and implement compound AI workflows that combine models, prompts, agents, tools, retrieval, evaluation, feedback loops, and execution into coherent production systems aligned with user and SME needs
- Develop clean, maintainable Python services and application logic that integrate AI capabilities into customer workflows, data platforms, APIs, and existing applications
- Operate on live systems by measuring behavior, identifying failure modes, debugging issues, and iterating rapidly to improve quality, reliability, and user value
- Build evaluation frameworks, test cases, feedback mechanisms, and observability patterns that help teams understand and improve AI system performance over time
- Work directly with customer stakeholders and subject matter experts to understand workflows, clarify requirements, reason about tradeoffs, and adapt systems as needs evolve
- Use AI-native engineering tools to accelerate implementation, debugging, experimentation, data analysis, and system improvement
- Collaborate with other AI Engineers, AI Strategists, and other Distillers to make pragmatic system design decisions that balance speed, robustness, maintainability, and customer impact
- Take accountability for the production outcomes of the components, workflows, and systems you build

## Requirements
- 2+ years of software engineering experience
- Ownership mentality for AI systems; comfortable making technical decisions, learning from system behavior, and owning results
- Experience building AI systems with LLMs or other AI models; comfortable composing multiple components (prompts, agents, tools, retrieval, evaluators, workflows, integrations) into end-to-end systems
- Strong engineering fundamentals; write clean, maintainable Python and build production software systems; understand versioning, debugging, testing, performance, code review, and production readiness
- AI-native working style; use AI tools daily to write and debug code, explore designs, analyze data, and automate repetitive work
- Comfort in customer environments; able to work directly with customer teams, ask good questions, adapt quickly to new domains, and communicate clearly about system behavior, limitations, and tradeoffs
- Pragmatic delivery mindset; navigate ambiguity, make progress with incomplete information, and balance speed with robustness
- Willingness to travel (typically 10–30%)

## Compensation & Benefits
- Base salary range: $150K – $250K
- Eligible for meaningful equity
- Comprehensive benefits package including 100% covered medical, dental, and vision for employees and dependents
- 401(k) with additional perks (e.g., commuter benefits, in-office lunch)
- Access to state-of-the-art models and generous usage of modern AI tools

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