Amazon
Principal Forward Deployed Engineer, AWS Forward Deployed Engineering
$200K–$271K
Arlington, VA +2 · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 29, 2026
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Seattle, WA
Herndon, VA - Experience
- 10+ years of non-internship professional software development; 8+ years leading large-scale production system design and architecture.
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related field, or equivalent experience.
- Visa sponsorship
- Candidate must be a US Citizen and currently possess and maintain an active Top Secret security clearance. After starting, must obtain and maintain an active TS/SCI security clearance with polygraph or commensurate clearance for each government agency for which they perform AWS work.
About the job
Leads strategy and hands-on delivery of production AI systems across strategic enterprise and government customer engagements, while establishing reusable architectures and engineering standards for AWS’s FDE practice.
What you'll do
- Set technical direction and architecture for complex, multi-workstream customer AI programs.
- Build production AI systems, reference architectures, and reusable platforms; define operational standards and production-readiness criteria.
- Guide senior technical talent, establish engineering standards, and represent the FDE practice to AWS leaders and customer executives.
What they ask for
- 10+ years of non-internship professional software development experience.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related field, or equivalent experience.
- 8+ years leading design and architecture of large-scale production systems in customer-facing or enterprise environments.
- Experience building production AI or ML platforms used across multiple products or customers; experience with enterprise-scale agentic workflows, multi-agent orchestration, or AI system governance; active US Government Security Clearance of Top Secret or above.
Nice to have
- Executive-level communication and engagement experience, including with SVP/VP/C-Suite stakeholders.
- Master's degree or above in computer science or equivalent; experience creating reusable platforms, setting multi-team technical strategy, or influencing product roadmaps.
Pay
200,100.00 - 270,600.00 USD annually (base salary); 200,100.00 - 270,600.00 USD annually (base salary); 200,100.00 - 270,600.00 USD annually (base salary)
Tools
AI, ML
AI focus
Builds and sets technical strategy for production AI systems, including multi-agent orchestration, enterprise retrieval, decision intelligence, evaluation, governance, and operational readiness.
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