Forward Deployed AI Engineer

$148,750–$201,250defenseclearance requiredremoteair-gappedRAG

United States (remote) · Posted July 18, 2026 · Closed

This role is no longer accepting applications. We keep closed listings up for reference — browse open FDE roles instead.

Why it's interesting

Fully remote defense FDE work at $149K–$201K — roughly half what SF AI labs pay for the same job title — and the JD goes out of its way to say "this is not an ML research position." The differentiator isn't model skill, it's shipping RAG into air-gapped Kubernetes, which is a genuinely scarcer competence than the comp band implies.

The role

Forward Deployed AI Engineer at Defense Unicorns, builders of the Unified Defense Stack for U.S. defense and national security customers. Embed with strategic customers from problem discovery to production; build APIs, data pipelines, retrieval and RAG systems; deploy across cloud, on-prem and air-gapped environments. 4+ years backend/full-stack in Python, information-retrieval experience, U.S. citizenship and clearance eligibility required. Up to 25% travel. Remote, USA. $148,750–$201,250. Verified on Defense Unicorns' Greenhouse board.

Applications closed

Applications go directly to the company. We curate; we don't broker.