Senior Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

Role

Senior Staff Forward Deployed Engineer responsible for rapidly prototyping and architecting AI agent systems and data governance solutions for strategic enterprise customers. This is a senior individual contributor role serving as the technical bridge between customers, Product, and Engineering to shape how large organizations adopt autonomous AI and to feed real-world use cases back into the platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and prototype LLM-based, multi-agent, and agentic workflow systems that automate complex reasoning and data governance tasks.
• Embed with Fortune 500 stakeholders to assess data ecosystems, identify governance bottlenecks, and translate needs into technical roadmaps leveraging Alation’s Knowledge Layer.
• Build and deploy BI and ML pipelines that convert cataloged data into executive-grade insights and measurable ROI.
• Partner with Deployment Strategists to align technical delivery with customer business outcomes.
• Define repeatable, scalable solution patterns and delivery methodology to move engagements from custom builds toward productized delivery.
• Feed edge cases and AI use cases back into Product and Engineering to influence the core platform roadmap.
• Design and build internal tooling, accelerators, automation frameworks, and reusable components for the Forward Deployed Engineering team.
• Conduct competitive analysis across customer environments and surface actionable intelligence to Product and GTM teams.
• Mentor field engineers and customer technical teams on agentic AI, data governance, and platform architecture.

Requirements

• 12+ years in software engineering with substantial customer-facing technical leadership experience (FDE, Solutions Architect, CTO-office equivalents).
• Deep hands-on experience with LLM orchestration frameworks (explicitly LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI), vector databases, RAG architectures, and fine-tuning ML models for enterprise use cases.
• Proven experience delivering large-scale BI and data pipeline solutions; comfortable with SQL and cloud data warehousing as well as predictive modeling.
• Architectural fluency across distributed systems, metadata management, data governance, and compliance-grade data platforms.
• Strong prototyping skills: ability to write production-quality code quickly and iterate toward working solutions.
• Track record of shaping delivery methodology, reusable solution patterns, and influencing cross-team technical standards.
• Executive presence and high emotional intelligence for earning trust with C-level and technical stakeholders.

Compensation

• On-target earnings (OTE, US-specific): $200,000 - $375,000 (75/25 split).
• Base pay range (US-specific): $148,974 - $201,115.