About NextLink LabsNextLink Labs is a fast growing technology firm focused on helping companies build, scale, and secure their software applications and organizations. We believe that in order for companies, teams, and products to succeed, technology must be utilized effectively and securely. We pride ourselves in helping our clients win in their respective industries.As a remote-first company with team members spread out all across the country, NextLink Labs continuously works to ensure our work environment is comfortable and collaborative. We also aim to maintain an inclusive work environment where everyone can thrive professionally and live full lives outside of work.Position SummaryNextLink Labs is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to join our growing AI practice. You'll work directly with clients on the design, build-out, and roll-out of production AI systems, collaborating closely with an AI Architect and focusing on the robust data infrastructure that makes AI applications work in the real world, using tools like Airflow, Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks.As a "forward deployed" engineer, you'll sit close to the customer's problem: discovering use cases, prototyping rapidly, hardening what works, and shipping it into the client's environment. Your time will be spent on hands-on engineering, delivering ETL/ELT pipelines for AI-powered applications, RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and the supporting cloud infrastructure. This role has a strong consultative dimension and is distinct from pure backend development or pure research positions.Key ResponsibilitiesAs a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll partner directly with clients to translate ambiguous business problems into production AI systems. You'll build the data infrastructure that underpins AI applications, develop RAG and agentic workflows on top of modern LLMs, write the evaluation suites and guardrails that keep those systems safe and performant, and integrate the whole thing into clients' existing software environments.Between and during engagements, you'll contribute to NextLink's internal accelerators and reference implementations so the broader AI practice gets stronger over time. You'll need to be technically deep, comfortable in ambiguity, and energized by direct client contact.What You'll DoData EngineeringDesign and build robust ETL/ELT pipelines and data infrastructure for AI-powered applications, ensuring high quality and availability of dataImplement end-to-end data pipelines for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), including data ingestion, chunking, embedding generation, vector store management, and retrieval optimizationML Ops and Production SystemsWrite evaluation suites and guardrails to measure quality, safety, cost, and latency before and after deploymentIntegrate AI components into existing client systems via REST/GraphQL APIs, event streams, and cloud-native services on AWS, Azure, or GCPApplied AI EngineeringBuild production-grade applications on top of LLMs (Claude, GPT, open-source models), including chat interfaces, copilots, agents, and back-office automationDevelop agentic workflows using frameworks such as the Claude Agent SDK, LangGraph, or comparable tools, including tool use, planning, and multi-step orchestrationRun rapid prototyping sprints with clients, getting something demo-able in days, then iterating toward productionDocument architectures, share learnings with the broader NextLink AI practice, and contribute to internal accelerators and reference implementationsRequired Qualifications3–5 years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 1 year shipping AI/ML or LLM-based features to productionStrong Python skills; comfort with at least one of TypeScript/JavaScript, Go, or Java for integration workHands-on experience building applications with modern LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, etc.)Background with data engineering tooling such as dbt, Airflow, Dagster, Snowflake, BigQuery, or DatabricksWorking knowledge of RAG patterns, embedding models, and at least one vector store (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, OpenSearch, etc.)Solid grasp of one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including how to deploy containerized services and manage secrets/IAMExperience writing tests, instrumenting code, and reasoning about observability, including for non-deterministic systemsStrong written and verbal English; comfortable presenting technical work to client engineering teams and non-technical stakeholdersCustomer-facing instincts: you ask good questions, manage ambiguity well, and don't disappear when a problem gets messyNice to HavePrior experience in a consulting, agency, or forward-deployed/solutions-engineering roleExperience with agent frameworks (Claude Agent SDK, AWS Strands, etc.) and MCP (Model Context Protocol)Familiarity with prompt engineering, evals frameworks, and structured-output techniquesInfrastructure-as-Code experience (Terraform, Pulumi, CDK) and CI/CD pipelinesExposure to regulated industries (financial services, healthcare) and the data-handling practices they requireContributions to open-source AI tooling or technical writing/speaking on applied AI topicsWhy NextLink LabsWe're a technical consulting firm that values clarity, ownership, and outcomesRemote-first, with a strong written communication culture (docs, async updates, clear PRs)Investment in your growth, including access to LLM playgrounds, an internal AI guild, and senior architects to learn fromThe opportunity to build something big and exciting at the frontier of applied AI
