Forward Deployed Team Lead, Federal

C3 Ai•Redwood City, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

C3 AI Forward Deployed Team Leads are senior tech leads who own a federal customer end-to-end. You'll combine strong technical architecture, hands-on coding, product ownership, project management, and stakeholder communication — embedding directly with civilian agency and Department of War (DoW) / DoD customers to take our product from "design" to "in production." You'll own one account at a time: scope the workflow with operators, design the architecture, write the code that closes the gaps, drive ATO / cATO, and deploy into the environments the mission actually runs on — including high-side. This role requires US Citizenship. Active Department of Defense (DoD) security clearance (Secret or higher) is preferred.

Requirements

BS/MS in CS, Software Engineering, or equivalent.
6+ years shipping production software, with 2+ years as a tech lead.
Strong proficiency in Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Java, Go, or C++.
Demonstrated ownership of systems taken from zero to production.
Prior delivery into a U.S. federal customer (civilian and/or DoW/DoD).
Working knowledge of PMOs, ATOs, AOs, ISSMs, RMF, FedRAMP, and contract vehicles.
Hands-on deployment experience inside accredited environments — IL5 minimum; IL6 / SIPR / JWICS preferred.
U.S. citizen, Active TS/SCI strongly preferred or willing to pursue a security clearance.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with Advana, cATO, and CDAO-managed environments is a strong plus.
Prior tech lead or staff engineer role at a federal-focused software vendor or service software factory (Kessel Run, Kobayashi Maru, Platform One, Army Software Factory, etc.).
Experience with AWS GovCloud / C2S, Azure Government / Government Secret, or other accredited cloud environments.
Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD into disconnected environments, data engineering at scale.

Responsibilities

Technical architecture. Own data flow, integration topology, identity model, and deployment topology across IL boundaries.
Hands-on coding. Write production code yourself — backend services, data pipelines, APIs, integrations.
Product ownership. Own the deployment's roadmap. Execute on the Statement of work. Decide what's in scope, what's a one-off, and what should become product.
Project management. Own the plan, milestones, risks, and dependencies. When something slips, know first and flag first.
Stakeholder communication. Run customer working sessions, brief program offices, and write clean status updates senior stakeholders will actually read.
Ship into production, including high-side. Deploy across IL2 → IL5 → IL6 as the mission requires. Work hands-on inside SIPR/JWICS and air-gapped networks. Land workloads on Advana and other CDAO-managed environments.
Drive ATO / cATO. Partner with security, ISSMs, and AOs to get authorization. Own the SSPs, POA&Ms, and accreditation artifacts.
Bridge field back to product. Push field learnings into the core platform so the next deployment is faster.