Forward Deployed Engineer - DEV

Customer Value Partners•, DC

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

FDEs at CVP are the rare engineers who get to do all of it — build, integrate, and open doors — and see the full arc of impact from a single deployment. You design the solution, wire the integrations, ship production code, and then watch a real agency change how it operates because of what you built. When that works, it creates the next opportunity: your technical reputation is the growth motion. Engineers who thrive here want to own outcomes, not hand them off. You may be in an agency briefing one hour and debugging a container the next, shifting contexts without losing signal. You treat ambiguity as raw material — undefined problems aren't blockers, they're where the work starts. You surface requirements by asking the right questions, not by waiting for a spec. And when it's time to communicate, you write with the kind of precision that makes technical updates actually land with non-technical stakeholders. Fifer is our flagship enterprise GenAI platform: deployed entirely within agency cloud environments, zero data leaving premises, swappable LLMs, and multi-agent RAG. When agencies want to build AI-powered workflows, audit processes, expert assistants, or developer tooling, you are how that happens. You’ll extend Fifer through custom skills, MCP server integrations, and agent workflows built specifically for each customer’s mission. This role requires the ability to obtain a Public Trust clearance

Requirements

5+ years of software engineering experience shipping production systems
Full-stack proficiency: JavaScript/TypeScript and/or Python; you can own a feature end to end
Cloud deployment experience (AWS, Azure, or GCP); comfortable with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines
Hands-on experience building or integrating LLM/GenAI-powered systems. You understand how model behavior, context windows, and retrieval quality affect what users experience
Expertise with AI agent harnesses (OpenCode, Pi, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or similar) and practical experience building agent configurations and skills
Strong Linux system administration — you can install, configure, and debug on VMs and Kubernetes clusters without a runbook

Nice To Haves

Prior FDE, deployment engineering, or solutions engineering experience at a commercial product company
Experience working with federal civilian agencies (HHS, CMS, DHS, VA, DOL, or similar)
Experience with FedRAMP-compliant deployments
RAG architecture and LLM operations knowledge (prompt engineering, retrieval tuning, model evaluation, evals)
MCP (Model Context Protocol) server development experience
PostgreSQL and schema design experience
Active Public Trust clearance or higher

Responsibilities

Own technical delivery from discovery through production across multiple concurrent agency deployments
Write and ship production-grade integrations using Fifer’s APIs, modern web frameworks, and backend services
Build custom skills, agent configurations, and MCP server integrations that extend Fifer to customer-specific missions
Deploy and configure FiferAUDIT in customer cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP) ensuring FedRAMP compliance boundaries are met
Work alongside agency technical teams and end users to understand workflows from the source, not requirements docs
Run discovery sessions, technical workshops, and working sessions that translate mission need into engineered solutions
Guide and train customers on prompt engineering, agent design, and agentic workflow optimization to maximize mission impact
Partner directly with prospective and current agency clients as a technical advisor, conducting discovery sessions to uncover operational pain points, then rapidly prototyping and deploying tailored AI solutions that demonstrate immediate, tangible value
Build and maintain deep relationships with customer technical leadership and program stakeholders