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# AI Forward Deployed Engineer

- **Company:** RST RE, LLC
- **Location:** Washington, DC, United States
- **Salary:** $150,000.0 - $250,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Python (Programming Language), Large Language Models, Multi-Agent Systems, Backend, AI Platforms, Machine Learning Operations, Data Pipelines
- **Published:** July 18, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=610a4891937078e4

## About the Role

* 1-4 years of production engineering experience
 * Strong Python engineering background with demonstrated end-to-end delivery
 * Hands-on experience with LLMs and building agentic systems - RAG pipelines, tool-calling agents, multi-agent frameworks, context management, agentic engineering
 * Real deep technical knowledge, not vibe-coding
 * Track record designing or managing data pipelines and ML infrastructure
 * Excellent verbal communicator
 * In-person 5 days/week at DC office
 * US citizen for the top-secret team (non-negotiable); US citizen preferred for the civilian team, O-1 candidates on the table for exceptional profiles
 * Available to start ASAP, * Backend development: 2 years (Required)

## Description

We are hiring our client's first cohort of Forward Deployed Engineers, split roughly 50/50 between two teams. The role is a Member of Technical Staff (MTS) position spanning applied AI research and production systems, with direct partner-facing responsibilities to ensure operational success inside US Government partner environments.

Two teams under the same role framing:

 * Team 1 - Black-Box / Top-Secret Team: works on non-civilian agencies (Department of War, Homeland Security). US citizens only, non-negotiable. Engineers on this team will work on-site at the Pentagon 2-3 times per week and will be sponsored for TS clearance. Existing TS clearance is a strong plus and a real acceleration
 * Team 2 - Civilian Agency Team: works with CMS, HHS, state and local governments. US citizens preferred but not required (O-1 candidates are on the table).

The mandate:

 * Architect and ship agentic AI systems for high-stakes US Government missions, from proof-of-concept through production
 * Design and integrate LLM-based applications - multi-agent frameworks, tool-calling agents, RAG pipelines, human-in-the-loop autonomy workflows
 * Embed directly with government partners in operational environments
 * Build and scale data curation and evaluation pipelines for model training and iteration
 * Develop and maintain infrastructure supporting model inference, experimentation, evaluation, and deployment on frontier AI platforms
 * Turn mission-relevant data, models, and tooling into real operational autonomy capabilities
 * Own the full system lifecycle - discovery, architecture, deployment, security, reliability, continuous improvement

Engineers are expected to be proficient at expressing technical ideas clearly to non-technical government stakeholders, and to represent Client's at a high caliber


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