Forward Deployed AI Engineer, Delivery and Operations

Sermo

5d•$240,000 - $250,000

About The Position

Sermo is hiring a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to embed with its Delivery and Operations team and redesign the survey lifecycle around AI agents. The role involves learning how current operations work, then designing, building, testing, deploying, and improving agent-first workflows in collaboration with Delivery, Operations, and Engineering. The objective is to create workflows in which agents perform the work and people verify it. The first major workstream is vendor engagement: building an agent to identify when external respondents are needed, send approved outreach, manage follow-ups, organize responses, support negotiation within an agreed rate card, test survey links, use historical bid and pricing data, and escalate decisions requiring human approval. Other work includes extracting and structuring client requirements, drafting surveys in internal tools, flagging unclear requirements, routing work to reviewers, and improving AI-assisted translation with selective re-translation and quality checks. The role also improves survey fielding and targeting by specialty, country, screening criteria, exclusions, and participation history; monitors responses; flags volume or timeline risks; recommends actions; and improves incentive setting. Fielding activity is managed through Salesforce, and the engineer will work alongside rather than rebuild the existing AI screener-matching tool. The engineer will map the survey lifecycle and establish measurable baselines, redesign workflows around agents, integrate with Sermo's homegrown survey platforms and Salesforce, and collaborate with internal engineers on deeper platform changes. Production workflows must include human-in-the-loop approvals, review queues, guardrails, audit trails, and exception handling. The role also includes evaluations and monitoring, tracking adoption and operational outcomes, documenting systems and procedures, and identifying future AI opportunities across Delivery. The role requires full-time availability in Latin American time zones, collaboration with teams in North America and Europe, and occasional travel to the delivery office in Mexico. During the first 90 days, the engineer will spend time onsite with Delivery teams in the US and Mexico, map and baseline key workflows, launch a vendor-engagement agent in shadow mode by day 60, and aim to have at least one workflow live in production and used daily by day 90.

Requirements

At least 5 years of software engineering experience, including at least 2 years building and deploying AI-powered workflows, agents, or automation in production business environments, not only prototypes.
Have completed an agent-first redesign of a real business workflow and be able to explain its baseline, redesign, remaining human work, and measured result.
Hands-on LLM experience with document extraction, classification, structured outputs, workflow routing, agentic task execution, and evaluation of non-deterministic systems.
Production engineering experience in Python and at least one typed language.
Experience integrating CRMs, internal tools, APIs, and data systems.
Experience building human approvals, review queues, exception handling, and quality controls into production systems.
Ability to work directly with non-technical operators, turn complex workflows into usable tools, work from directional guidance, and influence stakeholders not directly managed.
Strong written and spoken English and professional Spanish fluency.
Full-time availability in Latin American time zones and ability to collaborate with teams across North America and Europe.
Willingness to travel occasionally to the delivery office in Mexico.
BS in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Several workflow redesigns led across different functions, with judgment to prioritize future workflows and build their business cases.
Experience architecting a shared agent platform, evaluation standards, or reusable guardrail patterns.
Track record of setting direction across teams and influencing senior leaders.
Experience mentoring engineers or helping build an applied AI team, and interest in growing into that role.
Salesforce experience, including workflows, data structures, outreach, and activity tracking.
Experience with C#/.NET, React, and TypeScript environments and connecting AI workflows to homegrown platforms.
Experience in healthcare, market research, survey operations, or other regulated and data-sensitive environments.
Experience with multilingual or translation workflows.
Experience with Zapier or similar automation platforms, including knowing when a purpose-built agent is preferable.
Experience with LLM observability, prompt and version management, and reliability testing.

Responsibilities

Embed with Delivery and Operations to map the survey lifecycle end to end, including tools, handoffs, exceptions, approvals, and bottlenecks, and establish a measurable baseline.
Redesign workflows to be agent-first and build document extraction, structured outputs, routing, agentic task execution, and integrations through APIs, webhooks, and automation tools.
Build a vendor-engagement agent that detects when vendor support is needed, sends approved outreach, manages follow-ups, organizes responses, supports negotiation within the agreed rate card, tests survey links, uses historical bid and pricing data, and escalates decisions requiring human approval.
Build survey-creation workflows that extract and structure client requirements, draft surveys in internal tooling, flag unclear requirements, and route work to reviewers.
Improve AI-assisted translation, including selective re-translation of changed questions, with quality checks and review steps.
Improve survey fielding and audience targeting by specialty, country, screening criteria, exclusions, and participation history; monitor response volume and timelines, flag risks, and recommend next actions.
Improve incentive setting to encourage timely survey responses and manage fielding activity through Salesforce.
Connect workflows to Sermo's homegrown survey platforms and Salesforce, working with internal engineers on deeper platform changes.
Design human-in-the-loop controls for production workflows, including approval checkpoints, review queues, guardrails, audit trails, and exception handling.
Build evaluations and monitoring, and track adoption, response rates, turnaround, and time saved against established baselines.
Document systems, workflow logic, prompts, and operating procedures so the team can operate and improve workflows.
Identify and prioritize further AI opportunities across Delivery.
Work directly with non-technical operators, translating complex workflows into tools they use and influencing stakeholders across teams.
Spend time onsite with Delivery teams in the US and Mexico during the first 30 days; launch the vendor agent in shadow mode by day 60 and target at least one daily-use production workflow by day 90.