Sr Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, US Government - Arlington | Amazon Job

Job Description

Application deadline: Nov 1, 2026

This position requires that the candidate selected be a US Citizen and currently possess and maintain an active Top Secret security clearance with SCI eligibility or higher.

A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) embeds directly inside a strategic enterprise customer to design, build, deploy, and run AI-powered production systems alongside the customer's engineering team. FDEs write production-grade software and own outcomes end-to-end, from prototype through enterprise-scale deployment, combining the technical rigor of an AWS SDE with the urgency and ownership required to deliver measurable customer business outcomes. They create reusable architectures, patterns, and engineering mechanisms that scale the entire FDE practice. This position requires that the candidate selected be a US Citizen and currently possess and maintain an active US Government Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility (or higher).

Key job responsibilities
- Lead technical delivery across customer engagements. Own the technical strategy and execution for complex, multi-workstream customer AI programs. Make architecture decisions that span multiple services and organizational boundaries. Align technical approach with the customer's long-term technology strategy. Requires up to 25% travel.
- Architect and build production AI systems at scale: multi-agent orchestration, enterprise retrieval systems, and decision intelligence platforms for the most complex engagements. Drive clarity where neither the business problem nor the technology approach is fully defined. Build production systems that handle enterprise-scale traffic and reliability requirements.
- Own production excellence across workstreams. Define operational standards, evaluation frameworks, and production-readiness criteria for AI systems. Establish mechanisms (testing strategies, observability standards, incident-response playbooks) that keep AI systems healthy.
- Scale the team's effectiveness. Define engineering patterns, contribute to the interview and hiring process, and mentor junior FDEs into independent contributors.
- Accelerate customer transformation. Identify systemic opportunities to expand AI adoption, create reusable accelerators that cut time-to-value from months to weeks, and feed learnings back into AWS services and the FDE practice.

A day in the life
A Senior FDE spends the day leading technical delivery inside the customer's environment: setting the architecture direction across workstreams, building alongside customer engineers on the hardest production AI problems, reviewing designs and code, and mentoring FDEs into independent contributors.

About the team
ABOUT AWS:
 
Diverse Experiences
Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.
 
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We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. 

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Basic Qualifications:

- 5+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 5+ years of programming with at least one software programming language experience
- 5+ years of leading design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team
- Active US Government Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility (or higher)
- Experience leading agentic and spec-driven development at production scale (developing AI agents a plus)
- Experience with AI tools: eval frameworks, agent tooling, RAG pipelines, and prompt engineering

Preferred Qualifications:

- 5+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
- Current, active TS/SCI US Government Security Clearance
- Experience building complex software systems that have been successfully delivered to customers
- Experience with AWS services
- Experience building or deploying AI/ML applications at enterprise production scale
- Experience with React, TypeScript, Python, and/or Go
- Experience leading customer-facing technical projects or managing external stakeholder relationships
- 3+ years of experience working in an Agile, startup, or rapidly scaling environment

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

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