Principal Forward-Deployed Engineer

Job description

Lead technical strategy and execution for lighthouse projects within the employer global Customer Experience, Product and Design team. Turn large client ideas into agreed concepts within days, build working prototypes within weeks, and launch production-grade products within a quarter. Follow the 3/3/3 approach: 3 days for concept, 3 weeks for prototype, 3 months for MVP launch. AI is embedded across the lifecycle from specification to operations. Work in tight pods with a product strategist, experience designer, and forward-deployed engineers, guiding architecture and technical decisions. On larger programmes, lead multiple pods with the same rhythm. Report to Ahmet Sakar, Director of Technology, based in Riyadh covering Vision 2030-aligned digital initiatives.

Requirements

• Proficiency in AI‑assisted development & prototyping
• experience with AI tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Replit
• deep expertise in cloud platforms AWS, GCP or Azure
• proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• containerization experience (Kubernetes, Docker)
• automated CI/CD pipeline expertise
• solid foundation in API design and event‑driven streaming (Kafka, Kinesis)
• strong proficiency in Python or TypeScript with working knowledge of the other and production code in at least one additional language
• hands‑on experience with major LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Vertex)
• experience with RAG and vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Elastic)
• proficiency with agent frameworks (LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex)
• expertise in AI evaluation and observability using golden datasets and tools like Braintrust, LangSmith, Langfuse

Skills