Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer, Federal

The role

You will lead complex deployments of Deepgram's Voice AI platform for strategic federal accounts. You will own the full technical lifecycle from discovery and proof-of-concept to production deployment in on-prem, air-gapped, or constrained environments.

What you will do

• Own technical delivery across federal deployments
• Embed with federal customers to design and build mission-critical applications
• Deploy and operate models in self-hosted, air-gapped, and edge environments
• Lead technical discovery and solution design for federal prospects
• Prototype and build full-stack integrations using Python, JavaScript, Rust, or comparable stacks
• Enable successful deployments by delivering observable systems
• Guide federal stakeholders on maximizing operational value
• Scope work, sequence delivery, and remove blockers
• Build and manage relationships with customer leadership and technical stakeholders
• Contribute to code, codify working patterns, and share field feedback

Required qualifications

• Active Top Secret clearance, or equivalent
• 5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience, ideally in customer-facing or government environments
• Strong software engineering background with professional development experience in at least one modern programming language, such as Python, JavaScript, or similar
• Proven ability to scope and deliver complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous contexts
• Experience building and deploying production systems in government or similarly constrained environments
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Willingness to travel up to 50%, including on-site work at government facilities

Nice to have

• Experience with speech recognition, NLP, AI/Voice agents, or related AI technologies
• Familiarity with cloud deployment models (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, etc.), Kubernetes, Terraform, and related infrastructure
• Experience deploying software or models in on-prem, air-gapped, or edge environments
• Experience building or deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models
• Knowledge of FedRAMP, FISMA, or other government compliance frameworks
• Experience with API-first products and developer tools
• Exposure to federal sales or procurement cycles
• Experience developing automation solutions, self-service tools, and technical documentation

About the company

Deepgram is a research company that productizes as fast as possible, bringing voice as a natural interface to technology. Their speech models and real-time infrastructure power AI systems for more than 5,000 organizations.