Forward Deployed Engineer

NXT Level Technologies

$120K — $145K *
Aerospace & Defense
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience in software development or engineering roles
  • Proficiency in writing production-ready code
  • Experience deploying systems in sensitive environments
  • Strong communication skills with a focus on stakeholder engagement
  • Ability to rapidly prototype and iterate on solutions
  • Familiarity with AI systems, particularly in defense or security applications
  • Experience with infrastructure setup across diverse hardware and networking environments

Responsibilities

  • Contribute directly to core platform development by writing production code and building features
  • Deploy and operate AI systems for government and defense, ensuring full ownership
  • Engage with mission owners to understand and translate their workflows
  • Rapidly prototype and integrate solutions to field conditions
  • Translate field requirements back to the engineering team effectively
  • Operate independently at customer sites with minimal guidance
  • Maintain field infrastructure using practical solutions across various platforms

Benefits

  • Work in high-stakes environments that influence national security
  • Opportunity to engage directly with government and military stakeholders
  • Hands-on involvement in coding and deployment processes
  • Autonomy in technical decision-making and problem-solving
  • Dynamic work environment with varied challenges and rapid prototyping opportunities
Full Job Description
You'll deploy Aslan's platform into high-consequence environments across the U.S. national security community - intelligence, defense, and law enforcement. You own the full arc: scoping, integration, live operation, and customer trust, in settings where ambiguity is the default and the margin for error is thin.

But you are not a band-aid. You are not patching things in the field and handing them back. You are a core engineer who also happens to thrive at the point of contact - someone who ships production code during the week and deploys it into a SCIF on Friday. The expectation is that you contribute meaningfully to the

codebase, not just operate on top of it.

What you'll do
  • Contribute directly to Aslan's core platform, writing production code, building features, and extending agent capabilities alongside the engineering team
  • Deploy and operate agentic AI systems in sensitive government and defense environments, carrying full technical ownership from integration through live operation
  • Serve as the primary technical interface to mission owners and operators, learning their workflows, constraints, and language before they have to explain them twice
  • Build rapid prototypes, custom integrations, and field-expedient solutions in hours, not sprints and then bring the best of those back into the core product
  • Translate field requirements and edge cases back to the engineering team with precision, urgency, and working code
  • Operate independently at customer sites with minimal oversight -- no one is going to hold your hand and no one is going to tell you what to build
  • Stand up and maintain field infrastructure across heterogeneous hardware and networking environments using whatever works
  • Conduct live demonstrations to senior government and military stakeholders where failure is not a learning opportunity, it's just failure

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