Forward Deployment AI Engineer

Lyra Technology Group • Chicago, IL

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Lyra Technology Group is a private equity-backed holding company that invests and operates industry-leading technology service businesses. They are seeking a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to work directly within client businesses. This role involves designing, building, and deploying AI-powered solutions to create operational impact. The engineer will be on-site at small and mid-size businesses, diagnosing inefficiencies, building stakeholder trust, and implementing production-grade AI agents, automated workflows, and engineering solutions. This is a hands-on, client-facing engineering role that requires comfort in both presenting to business owners and writing Python code.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship.
• 2+ years of professional experience in software engineering, AI/ML engineering, or a technical consulting role.
• Working proficiency in Python and familiarity with REST APIs and cloud services.
• Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or similar).
• Understanding of prompt engineering, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and agentic workflow patterns.
• Ability to work independently in ambiguous, fast-moving client environments.
• Strong communication skills, capable of explaining complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Willingness to travel regularly to client sites (estimated 40–60%).

Nice To Haves

• Experience with workflow automation platforms (Zapier, Make, n8n, or similar).
• Familiarity with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma) and embedding pipelines.
• Exposure to low-code/no-code tools alongside custom-code solutions.
• Prior client-facing, consulting, or forward-deployed engineering experience.
• Experience working with SMB clients across industries such as professional services, healthcare, logistics, or retail.

Responsibilities

• Identify, engage, and secure new business opportunities through Client Acquisition & Relationship Management.
• Embed directly with clients to discover operational pain points, map workflows, and identify high-ROI opportunities for AI and automation.
• Design and build AI agents using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, or similar, including tool-use, memory, and multi-agent orchestration patterns.
• Develop AI-powered workflows that integrate with clients' existing systems (CRMs, ERPs, cloud platforms, communication tools, etc.).
• Engineer automation solutions across areas such as document processing, data extraction, reporting, customer communication, and internal operations.
• Own the full delivery lifecycle from scoping and architecture to build, testing, handoff, and lightweight documentation.
• Train and enable client teams to maintain and iterate on solutions post-deployment.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor, translating complex AI capabilities into clear business value for non-technical stakeholders.
• Contribute internally by codifying reusable components, playbooks, and delivery templates that scale across the practice.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees