Principal Forward Deployed AI Engineer

About the Role / About the Job
In this role, you will be deeply integrated with customer teams, taking ownership of engagements from initial conversations to the deployment of systems in production. Your focus is on delivering continuous value and achieving significant, long-term impact.

• Embed: Work directly on-site with operators and executives, managing each engagement like a venture within the customer organization.
• Scope: Transform ambiguous, high-stakes challenges into clear technical plans, prioritizing the initiatives that create the most value.
• Build: Design and deploy production-grade AI systems powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), utilizing scalable architectures.
• Drive Adoption: Ensure systems are effectively utilized by users, measure outcomes, and iterate on solutions until desired impact is achieved.
• Shape Direction: Guide enterprise teams through the AI adoption process and establish the technical direction for each engagement.

Where We Align: AI and Technology First

• Engineering Fundamentals: Expert proficiency in Python or TypeScript, with over 8 years of experience in building reliable production systems utilizing modern DevOps practices.
• AI-native: Experience with modern LLM tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, Guardrails, MCP, or agent frameworks, along with a solid understanding of AI system evaluation, debugging, and observability.
• Building AI Systems: More than 5 years of experience in building and deploying AI/ML and LLM-powered applications or agents in production, including RAG pipelines, tool utilization, and multi-step AI workflows.

Our Values

• Customer First: Your success is measured by customer outcomes, guiding your priorities.
• Ownership Mentality: You take full ownership of outcomes; when challenges arise, you view them as your responsibility to resolve.
• Clear Communicator: You simplify complex systems for both operators and executives, ensuring the value of your work is understood.
• Comfortable with Ambiguity: You thrive in environments with incomplete information, and you enjoy problem-solving under uncertain conditions.
• Long-term Builder: You contribute to the long-term success of the organization by integrating field insights back into strategy and operations.

The Seat

• Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Package: A competitive base salary accompanied by housing, transport, and education allowances, medical coverage, and equity options through the employee equity program. Detailed terms will be provided at the offer stage.

How We Work
We approach projects by focusing on the problem rather than the tools available, bringing energy and a structured plan to improve unclear situations.

• Curiosity: You actively learn about the on-site operations and continue to educate yourself as the technology stack evolves.
• Speed: You quickly transition from a brief to functional code, avoiding delays for optimal conditions.
• Rigour: You reproduce issues before implementing fixes, rigorously testing your deployments and justifying your decisions.
• Confidence & Humility: You both challenge and embrace challenges, evolving your views based on evidence without ego.
• Autonomy: You make decisions based on incomplete information, coordinating your work independently.
• Resourcefulness: You find ways to navigate partial data, unfamiliar codebases, and lack of access.
• Situational Leadership: You lead when necessary and support others when they have superior insights.
• A Force Multiplier: Your documentation, reviews, and established patterns enhance team productivity.
• AI-native Depth: AI tools are integral to your coding, testing, and debugging processes, and you have successfully built practical applications with LLMs.
• Where You Are: This is a principal-level position requiring over 8 years of experience with a proven track record in leading complex deployments from beginning to end, and proficiency in Python, TypeScript, or a similar language.