Forward Deployment Engineer

The role

The Forward Deployment Engineer will embed with strategic enterprise customers to design, build, and deploy production GenAI applications on SambaNova platforms. This role involves architecting LLM-powered workflows, optimizing AI inference performance, and troubleshooting production issues across model, software, and hardware layers.

What you will do

• Embed directly with strategic enterprise customers to design, build, and deploy production GenAI applications
• Architect and implement LLM-powered workflows including RAG pipelines, multi-agent systems, fine-tuning workflows, and coding solutions
• Optimize AI inference performance on SambaNova hardware
• Benchmark model throughput, latency, and accuracy
• Troubleshoot and resolve production issues end-to-end across model, software, and hardware layers
• Translate customer needs into clear product requirements and engineering feedback
• Partner with Account Executives and Solutions Engineers to shape technical sales strategy
• Develop reusable accelerators, reference architectures, and internal playbooks
• Present technical findings, architecture decisions, and roadmap input at customer executive briefings and internal forums
• Represent SambaNova at industry conferences and events

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on engineering experience
• Strong record of shipping production AI/ML systems
• Deep expertise in GenAI application development: LLM orchestration, RAG, agentic frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, DSPy), prompt engineering, and evaluation pipelines
• Strong foundations in ML fundamentals — model training, fine-tuning, inference optimization, quantization, and performance benchmarking
• Proficiency in Python
• Experience deploying AI workloads on cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Familiarity with containerization, orchestration (Kubernetes, Docker), and MLOps tooling
• Comfortable engaging directly with customers
• Bachelor's or graduate degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, or equivalent practical experience
• Willingness to travel up to 50% to customer sites

Nice to have

• working knowledge of C++ or CUDA
• Experience with AI accelerators or custom silicon (TPUs etc.)
• CUDA / low-level GPU programming
• Familiarity with VLLM / SGLang
• Enterprise AI deployments in regulated industries

Benefits

• Base salary plus equity
• 95% premium coverage for employee medical insurance
• 77% premium coverage for dependents
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution
• Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life, and AD&D insurance plans
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options like Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care
• Headspace subscription
• Gympass+ membership
• One Medical membership
• Counseling services with an Employee Assistance Program

Before you apply

• You must submit an application form for each position for which you believe you are qualified

About the company

SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, delivering a full-stack inference platform for customers worldwide. The company is disrupting the AI and high-performance computing space with an integrated hardware and software platform.