Forward Deployed AI Engineer

For one of our clients we are looking for an experienced Forward Deployed Engineer to own the delivery of AI and automation solutions directly within enterprise customer environments.

This is a highly hands‑on role for someone who can move from customer discovery and workflow analysis through to building, integrating, deploying, and improving AI agents in production.

You’ll work closely with senior customer stakeholders, understand complex business processes, and turn them into practical, measurable AI solutions. The role is best suited to engineers from AI‑first startups or project‑based consulting environments who enjoy staying hands‑on while working directly with customers.

What You'll Do:

• Own customer deployments end‑to‑end, from discovery and scoping through integration and production/go‑live.
• Analyse customer workflows and identify opportunities for automation, redesign, and optimisation.
• Translate business processes into agent logic, actions, decision rules, exceptions, and fallbacks.
• Build and deploy AI agents using LLMs, agent frameworks, MCP, APIs, prompt engineering, and evaluation frameworks.
• Integrate AI agents with ERPs, portals, spreadsheets, email, and custom enterprise systems.
• Debug, monitor, and improve live AI agents in production, with a focus on measurable customer outcomes.
• Lead customer working sessions and build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders.
• Challenge poorly defined requirements and help customers identify the highest‑value use cases.
• Identify opportunities for account expansion based on successful deployments.
• Create reusable templates, technical patterns, and runbooks.
• Feed customer learnings back into Product and Engineering to improve the platform.

What We're Looking For:

• 5–8 years' experience as an FDE, Applied AI Engineer, Technical Consultant, or similar hands‑on delivery role.
• Proven experience shipping AI/agentic systems into production within customer environments.
• Strong hands‑on experience with:
  • LLMs and agent frameworks
  • MCP
  • APIs and integrations
  • AI evaluations/evals
• Experience owning the full delivery lifecycle: customer scoping → build → integration → production.
• Excellent customer‑facing communication skills, with the ability to work credibly with senior stakeholders and articulate measurable business impact.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous environments and solving complex customer problems pragmatically.
• Willingness to travel across the UK/EU approximately 3 days per week during active deployments.

Ideal Background

Experience in an AI‑first startup or project‑based consulting environment is particularly valuable.

Domain experience in retail, e-commerce, CPG, supply chain, procurement, merchandising, manufacturing, or logistics is a strong plus.

Experience demonstrating measurable customer value and subsequently driving account expansions or upsells is also highly desirable.

Cavendish (Recruitment) Professionals Ltd are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and we believe that inclusivity begins with the candidate experience. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment regardless of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or belief.

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