Mission Delivery Engineer - DC

Description

The company builds a GenAI platform and works with U.S. federal customers, including DoD and intelligence community teams.

This is a hands-on role covering the full path from early discovery and proof-of-value (PoV) demos of custom applications through production rollout and handover to the customer or an integration partner.

The role combines pre-sales technical work with post-sale implementation, operations support, enablement, and structured handover. It is not purely presentations and not purely back-office engineering.

First 180 days: in days 0 to 45, become deeply familiar with the platform and build a repeatable demo and PoV environment that runs on customer laptops and in constrained settings, plus a starter kit for moving PoVs to production. Shadow priority accounts and pick 2 or 3 high-value PoV use cases.

In days 46 to 120, own at least 1 or 2 PoVs end to end, turn at least one PoV into a production or production-ready pilot, and set up a repeatable handoff with a partner or customer team.

In days 121 to 180, build repeatable playbooks and reference architectures across cloud, core data centers, and edge, enable at least one partner or customer team to deploy and run a solution alone, and feed structured field feedback into the roadmap.

Responsibilities

• Run technical discovery with DoD, intelligence community, and federal customers: mission workflows, data sources, operating limits (including DDIL conditions), stakeholders, and how success will be judged.
• Turn discovery findings into a clear use case, a solution outline, and a measurable PoV plan that defines good results, how to measure them, and what data is needed.
• Set out the path from PoV to production early, covering architecture assumptions, integration points, security concerns, and the conditions required for go-live.
• Design and deliver tailored demos, whiteboard sessions, and hands-on workshops for executives and practitioners.
• Build rapid prototypes and custom applications on the platform using real or representative customer data, often on short timelines.
• Show mission workflows such as RAG, agentic orchestration, streaming or event-driven ingestion, and edge inference, matched to customer constraints.
• Add basic evaluation and guardrails to PoVs, such as grounding checks, policy limits, and transparency, to build trust with stakeholders.
• Harden PoV code for production: modularize components, add testing, and follow the customer's engineering standards.
• Build and maintain integrations with customer identity, data, and workflow systems, including APIs, messaging and streaming, file stores, and enterprise data platforms.
• Automate deployments and keep dev, test, and prod environments consistent using containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and logging and metrics tooling.
• Improve performance, reliability, and operational readiness for mission workloads, covering observability, scaling, cost and performance tradeoffs, and failure planning.
• Work with security and accreditation teams on RMF and ATO documentation inputs, deployment patterns, and control considerations.
• Keep demos, PoVs, and production deployments realistic for the customer's environment, including classified and air-gapped settings and long-term sustainment.
• Prepare handoff packages for customers or partners: architecture diagrams, deployment guides, runbooks, infrastructure as code and configuration files, and code repositories where appropriate.
• Lead knowledge transfer and enablement sessions for customer and partner engineers, operators, and sustainment teams.
• Agree acceptance criteria with stakeholders and close each engagement with documented production sign-off or a clear transition plan.
• Coordinate with systems integrators and partners on roles, interfaces, and escalation paths so work carries from PoV to production.
• Work with Sales and Capture to shape technical win strategies, handle customer objections, and support bid or no-bid decisions with delivery and technical risk assessments.
• Contribute technical content to proposals, including architecture, integration approach, security posture, and implementation plans.
• Gather structured feedback from engagements and turn it into product requirements, prioritizing gaps that affect several customers.
• Work with Engineering and Product to improve packaging, documentation, deployment automation, and connectors that reduce delivery friction.

Requirements

• 6+ years in customer-facing technical roles such as Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, Forward-Deployed Engineer, or Delivery Engineer, supporting U.S. federal customers.
• A track record of running full engagements: discovery, technical validation, PoV or pilot, production implementation, and handover to a customer or partner.
• Comfortable working in sensitive mission settings and communicating within security and information-handling limits.
• Strong software engineering skills and the ability to build and harden applications quickly. Python is strongly preferred, along with experience with APIs, SDKs, and modern web or app frameworks.
• Working knowledge of GenAI systems and LLMs, RAG and retrieval, embeddings and vector search, agentic workflows, and evaluation and guardrails.
• Experience with distributed systems and integration patterns, including APIs, event-driven or streaming systems, and data pipelines.
• Experience with containerized deployments and DevOps practices such as Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and logging and metrics.
• Ability to explain technical capabilities in terms of mission impact and customer value, for both executive and practitioner audiences.
• Strong storytelling, whiteboarding, and workshop facilitation skills. Able to lead technical decisions and answer objections in real time.
• Able to drive outcomes with little supervision while coordinating across Sales, Product, Engineering, and partners.
• U.S. citizenship required.
• Active TS/SCI clearance required.
• Able to travel within the continental U.S., including to customer sites and secure locations as needed.
• Preferred: experience supporting DoD or intelligence community deployments in classified, air-gapped, or DDIL environments, with familiarity with RMF, ATO, and NIST 800-53 control families.
• Preferred: experience delivering production systems with clear operational ownership, including runbooks, monitoring, incident response, and sustainment handoffs.
• Preferred: experience building integrations with common federal data platforms, streaming systems, and identity and access systems.
• Preferred: prior military service or direct support of operational mission teams.
• Preferred: published demos, open-source contributions, or earlier work building reference solutions for developer platforms.

Conditions

Remote work, with the company based in Colorado and the role open to working from anywhere with the tools and support you need.

Base salary between $170,000 and $210,000, plus equity and benefits. Final pay depends on experience, impact, and location.

Travel within the continental U.S. is required, including to customer sites and secure locations.

The company is a small, fast-moving team with a flat structure, open communication, and little bureaucracy.

Benefits

• Equity in a well-funded startup with high growth potential.
• Comprehensive benefits, including health coverage, low-deductible medical plans, flexible time off, and family leave.
• Support for your remote workspace.
• A chance to shape how enterprises adopt GenAI, working alongside founders who have previously had successful exits.