Forward Deployed Engineer – AI

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Brazil.

📋 Description

• You will collaborate directly with clients on the design, development, and implementation of production AI systems, working closely with an AI Architect and emphasizing the robust data infrastructure necessary for AI applications in real-world settings, utilizing tools such as Airflow, Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks.

• As a 'forward deployed' engineer, you will be positioned near the client's challenges: identifying use cases, rapidly prototyping solutions, refining effective strategies, and deploying them within the client’s environment.

• Your responsibilities will include hands-on engineering, creating ETL/ELT pipelines for AI-driven applications, RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and the requisite cloud infrastructure.

• You will work directly with clients to translate vague business challenges into effective production AI systems.

• You will establish the data infrastructure that supports AI applications, develop RAG and agentic workflows utilizing modern LLMs, create evaluation suites and guardrails to ensure the safety and performance of those systems, and integrate everything into clients' current software environments.

• During and between engagements, you will contribute to NextLink's internal accelerators and reference implementations to strengthen the overall AI practice.

⛳️ Requirements

• 3–5 years of professional software engineering experience, including at least 1 year of deploying AI/ML or LLM-based features into production.

• Proficient in Python; familiarity with at least one of TypeScript/JavaScript, Go, or Java for integration purposes.

• Practical experience in building applications with modern LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, etc.).

• Background in data engineering tools such as dbt, Airflow, Dagster, Snowflake, BigQuery, or Databricks.

• Working knowledge of RAG patterns, embedding models, and at least one vector store (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, OpenSearch, etc.).

• Solid understanding of one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including deployment of containerized services and management of secrets/IAM.

• Experience in writing tests, instrumenting code, and considering observability, including for non-deterministic systems.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English; comfortable presenting technical work to both client engineering teams and non-technical stakeholders.

• Customer-focused mindset: you ask insightful questions, navigate ambiguity effectively, and remain engaged when challenges arise.

🏝️ Benefits

• Remote-first environment with a strong emphasis on written communication (documentation, asynchronous updates, clear pull requests).

• Investment in your personal growth, which includes access to LLM playgrounds, an internal AI guild, and mentorship from senior architects.

• The chance to contribute to something significant and innovative at the cutting edge of applied AI.