Mission Delivery Engineer - DC

Kamiwaza AI

1d•Remote

About The Position

Kamiwaza AI is seeking a forward-deployed, hands-on technical leader to guide U.S. federal customers through the full technical journey, from pre-sales discovery and proof-of-value (PoV) demonstrations to production implementation and handoff to customers or integration partners. The role combines consultative customer engagement with software development and delivery engineering, including work in constrained, disconnected, classified, or air-gapped environments. The Mission Delivery Engineer translates high-value mission use cases into credible PoVs and production-ready deployments. This includes discovering customer workflows and constraints, defining measurable success criteria, building prototypes and custom applications on the Kamiwaza platform, integrating with customer systems, and hardening solutions for reliable operations. The role also supports security and accreditation readiness, deployment automation, operational readiness, customer and partner enablement, technical deal support, and structured feedback to Product and Engineering. During the first 180 days, the engineer is expected to master the platform and create reusable demo and PoV-to-production tools; lead discovery and PoV engagements and convert at least one into a production implementation or production-ready pilot; and scale repeatable delivery playbooks, deployment patterns, and partner enablement. The position is based in the Washington, DC metro area, while the company describes itself as remote-first. It requires CONUS travel, including to customer sites and secure locations as needed. Base salary is $170,000–$210,000, plus equity and benefits; compensation depends on experience, impact, and location.

Requirements

At least 6 years of experience in customer-facing technical roles supporting U.S. federal customers, such as Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, Forward-Deployed Engineer, or Delivery Engineer.
Demonstrated ability to lead end-to-end engagements, including discovery, technical validation, PoV/pilot, production implementation, and customer or partner handoff.
Ability to operate in sensitive mission contexts and communicate clearly within security and information-handling constraints.
Strong software engineering skills and ability to rapidly build and harden applications; Python is strongly preferred.
Experience with APIs/SDKs and modern web or application frameworks.
Working knowledge of GenAI systems, including LLMs, RAG/retrieval, embeddings/vector search, agentic workflows, and evaluation/guardrails.
Experience with distributed-systems concepts and integration patterns, including APIs, event-driven/streaming systems, and data pipelines.
Experience with containerized deployments and modern DevOps practices, including Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and logging/metrics.
Ability to translate technical capabilities into mission impact and customer value for executive and practitioner audiences.
Strong storytelling, whiteboarding, and workshop facilitation skills, including the ability to drive technical decisions and handle objections in real time.
High ownership and bias to action; able to drive outcomes with minimal supervision while coordinating across Sales, Product, Engineering, and partners.
U.S. citizenship.
Active TS/SCI clearance.
Ability to travel within CONUS, including to customer sites and secure locations as required.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with infrastructure as code.
Experience supporting DoD/IC deployments in classified, air-gapped, or DDIL environments.
Familiarity with RMF/ATO processes and NIST 800-53 control families.
Experience delivering production implementations with operational ownership, including runbooks, monitoring, incident-response posture, and sustainment handoffs.
Experience building integrations with common federal data platforms, streaming systems, and identity/access systems.
Prior military service or direct experience supporting operational mission teams.
Published demos, open-source contributions, or prior work building reference solutions for developer platforms.

Responsibilities

Lead technical discovery with DoD/IC and federal customers, covering mission workflows, data sources, operating constraints, stakeholders, and success criteria.
Define use cases, solution outlines, measurable PoV plans, required data, architecture assumptions, integration points, security considerations, and paths from PoV to production.
Design and deliver tailored demonstrations, whiteboard sessions, and hands-on workshops for executive and practitioner audiences.
Build rapid prototypes and custom applications on the Kamiwaza platform using real or representative customer data.
Demonstrate mission workflows such as RAG, agentic orchestration, streaming/event-driven ingestion, and edge-capable inference in alignment with customer constraints.
Instrument PoVs with evaluation and guardrails, including grounding checks, policy constraints, and transparency measures.
Convert successful PoVs into production implementations by hardening code, modularizing components, adding testing, and aligning with customer engineering standards.
Design and implement integrations with customer identity, data, and workflow systems, including APIs, messaging/streaming, file stores, and enterprise data platforms.
Establish deployment automation and environment parity across development, test, and production using containerization and DevOps practices.
Drive performance, reliability, and operational readiness through observability, scaling, cost/performance tradeoffs, and failure-mode planning.
Apply security-first practices for data containment, least privilege, auditability, and handling sensitive customer information.
Partner with security and accreditation stakeholders on RMF/ATO readiness, including documentation inputs, deployment patterns, and control considerations.
Align demos, PoVs, and production deployments with customer environment constraints and sustainment realities, including classified and air-gapped environments.
Prepare handoff packages such as architecture diagrams, deployment guides, runbooks, IaC/configuration artifacts, and code repositories.
Lead knowledge-transfer and enablement sessions for customer and partner engineers, operators, and sustainment teams.
Define acceptance criteria and drive documented production sign-off or an agreed transition plan.
Coordinate with systems integrators and partners on continuity from PoV through production, including responsibilities, interfaces, and escalation paths.
Partner with Sales and Capture on technical win strategies, customer objections, bid/no-bid decisions, proposals, and technical responses.
Assess and communicate delivery and technical risks and contribute architecture, integration, security, and implementation plans to pursuits.
Capture engagement feedback and translate it into actionable product requirements, prioritizing gaps that affect multiple customers.
Work with Engineering and Product to improve packaging, documentation, deployment automation, and connectors.
Develop reusable delivery playbooks, discovery and PoV templates, demo flows, production-hardening checklists, and handoff and enablement kits.
Standardize reference architectures and deployment patterns across cloud, core data centers, and edge to reduce time-to-demo and time-to-production.
Enable at least one partner or customer team to deploy and operate a Kamiwaza-based solution independently using handoff materials and training.
Provide structured field feedback on federal deployment, security, integration, and delivery-acceleration roadmap needs.