Mission Delivery Engineer - CA

Kamiwaza AI•El Segundo, CA

1d•$170,000 - $210,000•Remote

About The Position

Kamiwaza AI is seeking a forward-deployed, hands-on technical leader to support U.S. federal customers. The Mission Delivery Engineer owns the technical journey from pre-sales discovery and proof-of-value (PoV) demonstrations of custom applications on the Kamiwaza platform through production implementation and a successful handoff to the customer or an integration partner. The role combines consultative customer engagement, technical storytelling, software development, delivery engineering, operationalization, enablement, and structured handover. Deployments may need to operate in constrained, disconnected, classified, or air-gapped mission environments. The role accelerates federal adoption by translating mission use cases into credible PoVs and demos, then converting successful PoVs into production-ready deployments and repeatable delivery patterns. It works across customers, Sales, Capture, Product, Engineering, systems integrators, and partners to reduce delivery risk and improve time to mission impact. During the first 180 days, the engineer is expected to master the Kamiwaza platform; build a repeatable demo and PoV environment and a PoV-to-production starter kit; support priority accounts and lead PoVs; convert a PoV into a production implementation or production-ready pilot; establish repeatable handoff and partner-enablement practices; and create playbooks and reference architectures that improve delivery repeatability.

Requirements

At least 6 years of experience in customer-facing technical roles supporting U.S. federal customers.
Experience in a role such as Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, Forward-Deployed Engineer, or Delivery Engineer, or similar.
Demonstrated ability to lead end-to-end engagements, including discovery, technical validation, PoV/pilot, production implementation, and handoff to a customer or partner.
Ability to operate 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 modern DevOps practices, including Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and logging/metrics.
U.S. citizenship.
Active TS/SCI clearance.
Ability to travel within CONUS, including to customer sites and secure locations as required.
Ability to translate technical capabilities into mission impact and customer value for executive and practitioner audiences.
Strong storytelling, whiteboarding, and workshop facilitation skills; comfortable driving technical decisions and handling 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.

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 integrating 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, identifying mission workflows, data sources, operating constraints, stakeholders, and success criteria.
Translate discovery into use-case definitions, solution outlines, measurable PoV plans, and defined data requirements.
Define the path from PoV to production, including architecture assumptions, integrations, security considerations, and production go-live criteria.
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.
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, introducing 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 dev/test/prod environment parity using containerization and DevOps practices such as Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, logging, and metrics.
Drive performance, reliability, and operational readiness for mission workloads, including observability, scaling, cost/performance tradeoffs, and failure-mode planning.
Apply security-first practices for data containment, least privilege, auditability, and safe handling of sensitive customer information.
Work with security and accreditation stakeholders to support RMF/ATO readiness through documentation inputs, deployment patterns, and control considerations.
Align demos, PoVs, and production deployments with customer environment constraints and sustainment needs, 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 to support continuity from PoV through production, clarifying 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 approach, security posture, and implementation plans.
Capture structured engagement feedback and turn it into actionable product requirements, prioritizing gaps that affect multiple customers.
Work with Engineering and Product to improve packaging, documentation, deployment automation, and connectors.
Build repeatable discovery, PoV scoping, demo, production-hardening, handoff, and enablement playbooks and reference architectures.
Enable at least one partner or customer team to independently deploy and operate a Kamiwaza-based solution using provided materials and training.
Provide structured field feedback that informs roadmap items related to federal deployment, security, integration, and delivery acceleration.