Robots & Pencils · 1 month ago
Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, Agentic AI
Seattle
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level
7+ years expRobots & Pencils is seeking an outcome-oriented Forward Deployed Senior Software Engineer to partner with strategic clients on high-impact agentic AI applications. You'll embed directly with customers throughout the product lifecycle, working hands-on from design to production, while serving as a technical thought partner and driving outcomes that maximize business value.
AppsInformation TechnologySoftware
Responsibilities
Embed with strategic clients as their technical partner for agentic AI applications
Build full-stack prototypes and production features using Python and JavaScript
Evaluate and integrate LLMs and tooling for the task at hand - e.g., AWS Bedrock, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT models, LangGraph/LangChain, retrieval and tool-use orchestration
Architect RAG systems, agent workflows, and conversational interfaces tailored to client needs
Own the path to production - CI/CD, IaC, observability, cost/performance tuning, SLIs/SLOs, and incident response
Iterate rapidly based on client feedback and business requirements, translate business goals into technical plans that accelerate time to value
Own end-to-end delivery from initial concept to production deployment
Identify opportunities to maximize client business value through agentic AI capabilities
Provide strategic guidance on application architecture and implementation approaches
Accelerate client time-to-value through hands-on development and knowledge transfer
Pick up missing knowledge and skills as needed to ensure project success
Lead complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives on-site and remotely; drive clarity, remove blockers, and keep execution on track
Set coding standards and architecture patterns in the client codebase; write clear docs, RFCs, and runbooks
Mentor client and partner engineers through reviews, pairing, and design sessions; raise the bar on quality and velocity
Make sound tradeoffs under real-world constraints - privacy, compliance, data residency, cost, and security
Align delivery with Robots & Pencils’ responsible AI practices and client governance
Work with internal product, engineering, and customer success teams
Share client insights to drive platform improvements and feature priorities
Contribute reusable patterns, frameworks, and documentation back to core platform
Collaborate across time zones with distributed teams
Participate in pre-sales technical discussions and solution scoping
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience
7+ years of professional software development with significant ownership of architecture and delivery
3+ years of Python in ML/AI systems, including PyTorch or TensorFlow
1+ years building with Generative AI: LLM agents, prompt engineering, LangGraph, LangChain
Hands-on RAG experience - semantic chunking, metadata enrichment, embeddings, retrieval quality, and latency/cost tuning
Experience with vector stores such as pgvector, Weaviate, or Chroma
Understanding of modern AI interoperability standards such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) and AI communication standards
Strong cloud and IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation) background - AWS, Azure, or GCP - plus containerization and distributed systems fundamentals
Strong AWS expertise: services, solid grasp of compute, networking, storage, security, and container platforms
Solid SDLC practices - testing strategies, CI/CD, code reviews, observability, and incident management
Upper-intermediate English for client communication
Experience leading complex technical projects with multiple stakeholders
Strong communication skills for technical and executive audiences
Ability to context-switch and adapt to diverse client environments
Willingness to travel to client sites
Preferred
Knowledge of advanced RAG patterns - Adaptive RAG, Agentic RAG, Self-RAG - and retrieval evaluation methods
Experience building agentic applications with LangGraph, LangChain, or AutoGen, familiarity with patterns and techniques such as ReAct (Reason + Act), Chain-of-Thought, Tree-of-Thoughts
MLOps/AIOps exposure - model deployment, lifecycle, governance, safety, red-teaming, data/privacy controls, prompt/version management, offline and online evals using managed services and/or Docker/Kubernetes with MLOps best practices
Experience with LLM fine-tuning techniques - SFT, RLHF, DPO, PEFT, LoRA/QLoRA - on hyperscalers' platforms like AWS SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, or Azure ML
Experience with production support and/or deployment on AWS, Azure, or GCP using modern CI/CD
Prior consulting or professional services experience
Company
Robots & Pencils
Robots & Pencils develops digital strategies and products that deliver exponential impact to our clients.
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Robots & Pencils has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)
2022 (1)
2021 (1)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
unknownKey Investors
Slack Fund
2022-04-26Series Unknown
Leadership Team
Leonard Pagon
Chairman & CEO
Nathan Carmon
Chief Operating Officer
Recent News
2026-01-07
2025-11-07
Company data provided by crunchbase