Forward deployed engineer - M&A group

IFS•Itasca, IL

8h•$130,000 - $160,000•Hybrid

About The Position

IFS is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer for its M&A Group to bring AI into real business operations. The role sits between engineering, consulting, and business change. The engineer will build and run applications for the IFS M&A Group and deliver production AI solutions to acquired companies, working with business and technical stakeholders to understand problems, prototype quickly, connect to existing systems, and deliver implementations that work at scale. The role works independently with limited guidance on assigned projects and within the group’s approved architecture, security, and data standards. Decisions outside those guidelines are escalated to the manager. The engineer delivers projects from discovery through design, build, deployment, verification, training, and support; takes solutions from prototype to production and operates them; supports user adoption; and communicates progress, trade-offs, and outcomes to stakeholders and project leads.

Requirements

In-depth expertise in AI/software engineering, with a solid understanding of related areas including data, cloud, security, and business context.
Experience shipping at least one system to production and measuring its operational or business impact.
Experience building an LLM application used by real users, covering tool use, retrieval, and prompt or context design.
Experience with API integrations between AI platforms and enterprise systems, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, NetSuite, or Databricks, and the associated data governance.
Python backend experience (FastAPI or similar), working knowledge of React/TypeScript and SQL, experience with one cloud (Azure preferred), infrastructure as code, and CI/CD.
Ability to work independently on non-routine problems, recommend practical solutions, and escalate decisions outside agreed guidelines.
Clear written and spoken communication with technical and business stakeholders.
A habit of verifying results and checking numbers before reporting them.

Nice To Haves

Experience in a forward-deployed or embedded engineering role.
Familiarity with RevOps, FP&A, or sales operations.
Production agent experience, ideally with Model Context Protocol.
Azure experience, including Container Apps, Entra, Key Vault, Terraform, or Azure DevOps.
Working French or Dutch.

Responsibilities

Deliver assigned AI projects and workstreams from discovery through design, build, deployment, verification, training, and support, with priorities and scope agreed with the manager.
Support discovery with business and technical stakeholders to understand workflows, systems, and desired outcomes, and help identify suitable AI use cases.
Analyze non-routine requirements, recommend practical solution designs, implement them as tested code, and prototype quickly to validate use cases.
Build integrations connecting AI platforms to existing applications, APIs, and data sources, using narrowly scoped service identities and following approved security and data governance policies.
Ship AI features scoped to the user, naming sources and models on every answer and testing features before release.
Build agentic systems that automate processes and use enterprise tools within defined guardrails.
Take solutions from prototype to production and operate them, including jobs, backups, monitoring, access, and incident write-ups.
Train users, support adoption, and measure results against objectives agreed at the start of each project.
Recommend models and platforms within approved standards, and contribute lessons learned from acquired-company projects to team best practices and process improvements.
Clearly report progress, trade-offs, and outcomes to stakeholders and project leads.
Provide guidance to junior colleagues where needed.