Sr. Forward Deployed Engineer

Corteva Agriscience • Franklin, TN

6d

About The Position

Corteva Agriscience is building an AI-Native Software Engineering operating model from the ground up, utilizing hybrid teams of humans and agents. Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) are crucial to this model, embedding with internal business partners (Finance, R&D, seed production, commercial, G&A) to understand their workflows deeply and deliver software solutions that significantly compress effort. This role is fundamentally a software engineering position, focusing on building the right solution for the problem, which may include web apps, services, integrations, data pipelines, or internal tools, incorporating agentic AI components when appropriate. The key differentiator is the use of agentic AI as a force multiplier to ship production-quality solutions at a pace traditional engineering cannot match. FDEs own outcomes end-to-end, from discovery and design through deployment, measurement, and ongoing partnership for improvement. The specific level of the role is determined by experience, scope, autonomy, and engagement complexity.

Requirements

• Track record of shipping production software end-to-end.
• Ability to write code—and direct agents to write code—that other engineers want to inherit.
• Full-stack range across front-end, back-end, APIs, data, and cloud.
• Strong instincts on architecture and trade-offs; solid operational practices (observability, testing, CI/CD).
• Experience building with agentic AI, where AI coding tools are part of the daily workflow.
• Hands-on building agentic components when warranted: modern LLMs, tool use, retrieval, multi-step workflows, evals, and guardrails.
• Sharp judgment about when to use AI and when not to.
• Ability to earn trust quickly with business stakeholders by asking sharp questions and listening.
• Ability to translate fluently between business outcomes and technical decisions, with P&L impact, cycle time, throughput, and risk as first-class concerns.
• Comfort with ambiguity: ability to walk into an undefined problem and leave with a sharp problem statement, baseline, and plan.
• Prior experience as a Senior level engineer, Solutions Architect, or other senior level engineering role.
• Background in agriculture, seed production, seed product development, biotechnology, or other broad scale enterprise G&A function.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Sr. Forward Deployed Engineers to deliver solutions to the business while learning the critical aspects to operate independently as a FDE.
• Embed with a business function as their forward-deployed partner.
• Build genuine fluency in their workflows, edge cases, and judgment calls.
• Frame the problem before reaching for a solution.
• Identify highest-leverage opportunities, set measurable baselines, and align on success before writing code.
• Build the right solution end-to-end: full-stack apps, services, integrations, pipelines, automations.
• Add agentic AI components — multi-step workflows, tool use, retrieval, evals, guardrails — when the problem calls for it.
• Ship to production and stay engaged as a long-term partner, ensuring the function grows more capable over time.
• Conduct and supervise agents by default, leveraging orchestration of multiple agents in parallel and critically reviewing their output.
• Make learnings compound across the FDE group by sharing patterns, components, and lessons.
• Promote common needs into Corteva’s shared platform, turning recurring problems into reusable infrastructure.
• Help shape the FDE practice itself, including recruiting bar, engagement playbooks, technical standards, and mentorship.
• Take on the most ambiguous, highest-stakes engagements as your scope grows.

Benefits

• Numerous development opportunities offered to build your skills.
• Be part of a company with a higher purpose and contribute to making the world a better place.
• Health benefits for you and your family on your first day of employment.
• Four weeks of paid time off and two weeks of well-being pay per year, plus paid holidays.
• Excellent parental leave which includes a minimum of 16 weeks for mother and father.
• Competitive retirement savings plan.
• Tuition reimbursement program.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed