Job Description

About the role

The Forward Deployed AI Engineer is the builder on the team. You operate like an early-stage startup CTO inside a Fortune 500 client: deep, fast, and comfortable with ambiguity. You write production-grade code, ship a working v0 in weeks - not quarters - and measure your own success by movement in the client's numbers, not code shipped.

What you'll do

• Build data pipelines joining NIQ's consumer and retail data with the client's own sales, inventory, and margin data
• Design and ship AI decision applications: recommendation workflows, LLM-agent-driven analysis, approval flows with guardrails, full auditability
• Navigate broken, incomplete enterprise data environments - and ship anyway
• Work in a 2-3 person deployment team with a data scientist and an AI Deployment Architect, dedicated to one client
• Surface reusable patterns from each deployment back into NIQ's product platform

Qualifications

What we're looking for
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: production Python and SQL, data pipelines, APIs
• Hands-on with modern AI tooling - LLM APIs, agent frameworks, retrieval systems
• Full-stack enough to ship a usable application end-to-end on your own
• Bias to speed and client impact over perfect architecture
• Comfortable client-facing: you demo your own work and defend your own trade-offs

Nice to have
• Forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or startup experience
• Experience with retail, CPG, or commercial data at scale

Additional Information

Why this role

You will be on the founding team of a new motion inside a global company - with the autonomy of a startup and the data assets of a market leader. Success is measured on client outcomes, not deliverables, and this role is a direct path to leadership as the deployment portfolio grows

This role has a market-competitive salary with an anticipated base compensation of the following range: $110,000 - $160,000. Actual salaries will vary depending on a candidate's experience, qualifications, skills, and location. This role might also be eligible for a sales-based incentive or performance-based bonus. Other benefits include flexible working environment, comprehensive health insurance, industry-leading parental leave, life insurance, education support and more

Our Benefits

• Flexible working environment
• Volunteer time off
• LinkedIn Learning
• Employee-Assistance-Program (EAP)