Lightning AI

Forward Deployed Engineer

Lightning AI
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3 months ago
London, United Kingdom +3 moreSenior

Base Salary

$120k - $250k/yr

Responsibilities

  • Partner with customers to design, implement, and deploy end-to-end AI systems and workflows on Lightning AI’s platform.
  • Translate ambiguous customer objectives into technical specifications, proof-of-concepts, and scalable production implementations.
  • Own customer technical engagements from discovery and architecture through deployment, monitoring, and expansion.
  • Develop and maintain production-grade software, with a strong preference for Python.
  • Build reliable and observable systems optimized for latency, throughput, quality, scalability, and cost.
  • Debug and optimize AI systems across inference infrastructure, model behavior, APIs, and distributed workloads.
  • Support customer engineering teams throughout AI deployment, scaling, and production operations.
  • Collaborate with internal product and engineering teams to improve platform capabilities and influence roadmap priorities.
  • Select appropriate tools and approaches, navigate ambiguity, and deliver high-quality outcomes for customers and internal teams.

Requirements

  • Strong production software engineering experience in one or more general-purpose programming languages, with Python strongly preferred.
  • Direct customer experience in highly technical environments such as Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Applied AI Engineering, or related roles.
  • Familiarity with AI/ML pipelines and model development, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring lifecycles.
  • Experience deploying and operating production AI/ML systems in cloud or distributed environments.
  • Familiarity with modern AI infrastructure and tooling, including Docker, Kubernetes, model serving systems, and distributed inference workloads.
  • Strong communication and collaboration skills with customers, engineers, and cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Ability to translate business needs into technical solutions and drive projects from concept through production delivery.
  • Ability to work effectively in ambiguous, fast-moving, high-growth environments.
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field.
  • Preferred qualifications include large-scale production AI/ML experience, familiarity with vLLM, TensorRT, Ray, LangGraph, vector databases, workflow orchestration, inference optimization, distributed systems, GPU-accelerated workloads, startup environments, and an advanced technical degree.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage in the U.S.; private medical and dental insurance in the U.K.
  • Retirement and financial wellness support in the U.S.; pension contribution in the U.K.
  • Generous paid time off and holidays.
  • Paid parental leave.
  • Professional development support.
  • Wellness and work-from-home stipends.
  • Flexible work environment.
  • Based in a New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, or London hub with at least two in-office days per week and occasional team and company offsites.

Categories

Forward DeployedML Engineering
Lightning AI

About Lightning AI

51-200 employees

The AI development platform - From idea to AI, Lightning fast ⚡️. Code together. Prototype. Train on GPUs. Scale. Serve. From your browser - with zero setup. AI Studio is your laptop on the cloud. Zero setup. Always ready. Persistent storage and environments. Code on CPU. Debug on GPU. Scale to multi-node. Run sweeps, jobs and more. Scale models with PyTorch Lightning, Fabric, Lit-GPT, torchmetrics and more.