AvePoint

Forward Deployed Engineer - AI

AvePoint$180K — $230K *
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years in Software Engineering, Solutions Architecture, or Technical Consulting.
  • 2+ years building production AI or LLM solutions.
  • Hands-on experience with Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, and Google Vertex AI.
  • Strong programming skills in Python, C#, and TypeScript.
  • Ability to scope technical projects from ambiguous business requirements.
  • Excellent communication skills with both technical and executive audiences.
  • Comfortable working autonomously in dynamic client environments.

Responsibilities

  • Lead AI governance and discovery workshops with enterprise clients.
  • Translate business challenges into scoped AI project deliverables.
  • Identify valuable AI use cases and define success criteria.
  • Produce architecture outlines and delivery phases for AI solutions.
  • Write Statements of Work (SoWs) for project delivery.
  • Develop prototypes and production-ready AI solutions, including LLM integrations.
  • Act as a trusted advisor, troubleshooting issues and guiding customer engagement.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
  • 401(k) plan with company match.
  • Unlimited paid time off (PTO).
  • Bonuses, commissions, or equity (RSUs) based on role.
  • Opportunities for compensation discussions even outside the salary range.
Full Job Description
About the Role

Enterprises are adopting AI faster than they can govern it, and they're looking for a partner who can do two things exceptionally well:
  • Speak credibly about AI trust, governance and security.
  • Build real AI solutions that solve business problems.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (AI), you'll be the technical face of AvePoint inside enterprise customers. You'll be equally comfortable:
  • Whiteboarding AI trust and governance concepts with CISOs and executives.
  • Translating business challenges into scoped AI delivery projects.
  • Building the first working prototype yourself.

You'll embed with customers, own engagements end-to-end, and deliver tangible outcomes.

This isn't a traditional pre-sales role or a back-office delivery position. It's a highly autonomous customer-facing engineering role inspired by the engagement models used by leading AI companies-owning problems from discovery workshops through to production.
What You'll Do

Advise on AI Trust & Governance
  • Lead AI governance and discovery workshops.
  • Help customers understand and govern their AI landscape (agents, copilots, models and shadow AI).
  • Explain AI governance, security posture and resilience to both technical and executive audiences.
  • Help establish:
    • AI inventories
    • Approval workflows
    • Risk classifications
    • Audit evidence
    • Practical AI operating models.

Scope & Shape AI Projects

Work directly with business stakeholders to understand the real business problem behind AI initiatives.

You'll:
  • Identify high-value AI use cases.
  • Define success criteria.
  • Translate ambiguous requirements into deliverable technical scopes.
  • Produce:
    • Architecture outlines
    • Data & integration requirements
    • Delivery phases
    • Effort estimates
    • Risk assessments
  • Write Statements of Work (SoWs) customers can sign and engineering teams can deliver.

Build & Deliver

Develop both prototypes and production-ready AI solutions including:
  • AI agents
  • RAG pipelines
  • LLM integrations:
    • Azure OpenAI
    • AWS Bedrock
    • Google Vertex AI
    • Anthropic
  • MCP-based tool integrations
  • Governance and security controls

You'll also build custom tooling for regulated, cloud-restricted or air-gapped environments where SaaS solutions aren't suitable.

Own Customer Delivery

Remain the trusted technical advisor throughout the engagement by:
  • Running enablement sessions.
  • Supporting customer adoption.
  • Troubleshooting production issues.
  • Identifying opportunities to expand engagements where genuine customer value exists.
What We're Looking For

Must-Haves
  • 5+ years in Software Engineering, Solutions Architecture or Technical Consulting.
  • 2+ years building modern AI/LLM solutions in production (not just experimentation).
  • Hands-on experience with:
    • Azure OpenAI
    • AWS Bedrock
    • Google Vertex AI
    • LangChain
    • Semantic Kernel
  • Experience building:
    • RAG solutions
    • Agentic workflows
    • Tool/function calling
  • Strong programming skills in:
    • Python
    • C#
    • TypeScript
  • Experience with Azure, AWS or GCP, including identity, networking and data services.
  • Proven ability to scope technical projects from ambiguous business requirements.
  • Excellent communication skills-from board-level conversations through to deep technical discussions.
  • Comfortable working autonomously in fast-moving client environments.
  • Willingness to travel (~40%).

Strong Pluses
  • AI Security:
    • Prompt injection
    • Data leakage
    • Agent permissions
    • AI-SPM / DSPM
  • Experience with:
    • Model Context Protocol (MCP)
    • Agent runtimes
    • Pinecone
    • Milvus
    • Weaviate
    • Chroma
  • Enterprise data governance, backup, resilience or Microsoft 365 ecosystems.
  • Experience delivering into regulated industries:
    • Public Sector
    • Defence
    • Financial Services
    • Healthcare
  • Experience in air-gapped or sovereign cloud environments.
  • Previous Forward Deployed Engineering, embedded consulting or customer-facing engineering experience.

The Salary Range for this role is $180,000 - $230,000. At AvePoint, we strive to offer competitive, fair, and equitable total rewards. The listed salary range represents a good faith estimate, with final offers based on location, experience, skills, and qualifications. The listed range reflects base salary only; our total rewards include base salary, comprehensive benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401(k) with match, unlimited PTO), and depending on the role, bonuses, commissions, or equity (RSUs). We welcome compensation discussions-apply even if your expectations fall outside the range.

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About AvePoint

AvePoint is a privately held technology company headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey. The company develops software to help organizations migrate, manage, and protect their Office 365 and SharePoint data. AvePoint has more than 16,000 customers and 7 million cloud users worldwide. The company was founded in 2001 by Kai Gong and Dr. Tianyi Jiang. AvePoint has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America by Deloitte and Inc. 5000. The company has also been recognized as Microsoft's Partner of the Year for Cloud Application Development and Collaboration and Content.
Learn more about AvePoint
Size
1,500 employees
Market Cap
$780.1 million
Industry
Founded
2001
NASDAQ

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