Mission Delivery Engineer - CA

Kamiwaza AI•El Segundo, CA

1d•Remote

About The Position

Kamiwaza AI is seeking a forward-deployed, hands-on technical leader to guide U.S. federal customers from pre-sales discovery and proof-of-value demonstrations through production implementation and customer or partner handoff. The role combines technical sales execution with application development, delivery engineering, operationalization, enablement, and structured handover. The engineer will translate mission needs into credible PoVs and production-ready deployments, including in constrained, disconnected, classified, or air-gapped environments. The position involves customer discovery, rapid prototyping on the Kamiwaza platform, production hardening, integrations, deployment automation, security and accreditation readiness, partner collaboration, and feedback to Product and Engineering. The first 180 days focus on mastering the platform and creating a repeatable delivery toolkit, delivering PoVs and converting at least one toward production, and building playbooks and partner/customer enablement practices. The posting gives the role location as El Segundo, California, while also describing a remote-first culture and stating that the company is based in Colorado. Compensation is a base salary of $170,000–$210,000, plus equity and benefits. Actual compensation depends on experience, impact, and location.

Requirements

At least 6 years in customer-facing technical roles supporting U.S. federal customers.
Demonstrated ability to lead end-to-end engagements spanning discovery, technical validation, PoV/pilot, production implementation, and customer or partner handoff.
Ability to work in sensitive mission contexts and communicate within security and information-handling constraints.
Strong software engineering skills and ability to build and harden applications rapidly; 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 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; ability to drive technical decisions and handle objections in real time.
High ownership and bias to action; ability to work with minimal supervision and coordinate 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

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 integrating 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.
Familiarity with infrastructure as code.

Responsibilities

Lead technical discovery with DoD/IC and federal customers, including mission workflows, data sources, operating constraints, stakeholders, and success criteria.
Translate discovery into use-case definitions, solution outlines, measurable PoV plans, and upfront PoV-to-production paths.
Design and deliver tailored demonstrations, whiteboard sessions, and 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.
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 development, test, and production environment parity using containerization and DevOps practices.
Drive performance, reliability, observability, scaling, cost/performance tradeoffs, and failure-mode planning for mission workloads.
Apply security-first practices for data containment, least privilege, auditability, and safe handling of sensitive information.
Partner with security and accreditation stakeholders on RMF/ATO-ready approaches, documentation, deployment patterns, and control considerations.
Ensure demonstrations, PoVs, and deployments fit customer environment constraints and sustainment realities, including classified and air-gapped environments.
Prepare handoff packages such as architecture diagrams, deployment guides, runbooks, infrastructure-as-code/configuration artifacts, and code repositories.
Lead knowledge transfer and enablement 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, and delivery and technical risk assessments.
Contribute technical content to proposals and responses, including architecture, integration, security posture, and implementation plans.
Capture engagement feedback and translate it into actionable product requirements; partner with Product and Engineering to improve packaging, documentation, automation, and connectors.
During the first 45 days, master the platform, establish a repeatable demo/PoV environment and starter kit, shadow priority accounts, and identify high-leverage PoV use cases.
During days 46–120, lead discovery and demonstrations, own 1–2 PoVs end-to-end, convert at least one PoV into a production implementation or production-ready pilot, establish handoff practices, and support active pursuits.
During days 121–180, create reusable playbooks, standardize reference architectures and deployment patterns, enable at least one partner or customer team to deploy and operate a solution, and provide structured field feedback.