Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

DigitalOcean • Seattle, WA

4h • Hybrid

About The Position

We are looking for a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer who is passionate about solving complex cloud infrastructure challenges in the fast-growing AI/ML space. This is a high-impact position designed to be the "technical tip of the spear" for our most strategic AI-Native (ANE) customers. As an FDE, you will sit at the intersection of Product Engineering and Customer Implementation. You will be embedded directly with our most strategic customers to drive transformational AI adoption. You will collaborate closely with customer teams to ship advanced AI applications that solve real world business problems. You will build the tools, migration scripts, and AI starter kits that don’t just solve one customer's problem, but scale the entire DigitalOcean AI Cloud ecosystem. Your mission is to accelerate "time-to-inference" in production at scale and serve as a critical feedback loop, ensuring our product roadmap is informed by the world's most demanding AI workloads.

Requirements

• AI/ML Architecture & Domain Expertise: Significant experience in the AI/ML lifecycle, specifically hosting large language or multimodal models using inference engines like vLLM, SGLang, or Modular. You have a deep understanding of common LLM architectures and optimization techniques (e.g., continuous batching, quantization).
• Distributed Systems & Infrastructure Mastery: Act as the subject matter expert on modern GPU families (NVIDIA/AMD) and their software stacks (CUDA, ROCm, TensorRT, OpenAI Triton). Expert proficiency in Kubernetes (K8s) and the design of distributed systems, including microservices, messaging systems, databases, and Infrastructure as Code. You can seamlessly integrate AI workloads with core cloud services (Networking, VPC, Storage, Compute).
• High-Performance Inference & Hardware Optimization: Hands-on experience with distributed inference serving frameworks (e.g., llm-d, NVIDIA Dynamo, or Ray Serve). You understand GPU-level optimization and have experience with interconnect technologies like NVlink, XGMI, or RoCE to maximize hardware efficiency.
• Software Engineering Foundation: Strong production coding skills in Python or Go with the ability to build high-quality tools, automation, and internal assets.
• Data-Driven Performance Insight: Proven ability to benchmark AI infrastructure and perform GPU utilization tuning to optimize customer ROI and workload performance.
• Consultative Execution: Proven ability to establish instant technical credibility with CTOs and Lead Architects while managing high-stakes technical migrations.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with emerging AI orchestration frameworks like LangGraph, CrewAI, or LlamaIndex.
• A background in technical consulting or "Forward Deployed" roles at high-growth AI or infrastructure companies.
• Experience building and scaling "Center of Excellence" models or partner delivery frameworks.
• Active contributor to open-source AI projects or technical communities.

Responsibilities

• Embedded Customer Engineering: Partner deeply with strategic ANEs to manage complex migrations, build production-ready PoCs, and execute hands-on application builds on our GPU infrastructure.
• Build Scalable Assets & Tooling: Operationalize field learning by building migration planners, reusable systems, benchmarking frameworks, model optimization agents, and deployment automation scripts (e.g., Terraform/Pulumi) that standardize how AI workloads are deployed and tuned across DigitalOcean.
• Develop AI "Starter Kits": Create pre-built GenAI agents, solution templates, and notebooks (e.g., LangGraph, CrewAI) tailored to popular and advanced business needs.
• Drive the Product Roadmap: Act as the frontline technical voice for CPTO, surfacing architectural gaps and edge cases to inform core product development. Transition field-built tools into native product features.
• New Tech Validation: Lead the early testing and integration of emerging AI frameworks to ensure a first-class developer experience on DigitalOcean.
• Partner & GTM Enablement: Co-develop delivery frameworks with Strategic and Technical partners to enable repeatable, high-quality deployments at scale.
• Market Leadership: Produce field-tested demo kits and deployment guides that support new product releases with practical, validated assets.

Benefits

• Competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy
• Reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education
• Access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses
• Bonus in addition to base salary
• Equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program

What This Job Offers

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