Forward Deployed Engineer (Chief Role)

HybridSalary not specified
Bulgaria

Job Description, Responsibilities & Requirements

About the Position

We are looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (Chief Role) to build AI-native solutions where LLM and its harness are the core of the value. This is a builder's role where you and your team are responsible for building agentic systems, writing production code, and standing up the evals and observability. You will work closely with SMEs and end-users to understand where the real value lies and design the feedback loops.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build and ship AI-native systems E2E - agents, workflows, RAG and the harness: custom tool calling, sandboxing, context engineering and sub-agents, caching, compaction
  • Build the evaluation pipelines and use them to prove the system is genuinely useful
  • Design for failure in the agent loop: retries, model fallbacks, cost limits and human-in-the-loop on consequential actions
  • Capture domain expertise and repeatable workflows so what works on one engagement carries to the next
  • Engage early to help shape the use case and check technical feasibility
  • Write production-grade Python: integrations, APIs, data access, deployment
  • Work directly with SMEs and end-users through interviews, UAT and observing the real workflow, and validate that the system fits how people actually work

Requirements

  • 7+ years of engineering experience with a strong recent track record building production AI / LLM applications rather than prototypes or research only
  • Strong agent-design judgment - task-harness fit, matching the harness to the context, failures and policies of the actual task rather than calling a model in a loop
  • Capability to operate close to the client: lead discovery and feasibility conversations, work directly with SMEs and end-users, and explain technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences
  • Hands-on experience with agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph or Semantic Kernel and major LLM providers including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Gemini
  • Expert-level proficiency in Python and solid software engineering fundamentals
  • Strong RAG and retrieval skills: vector databases, embeddings, hybrid search, re-ranking, chunking and context management
  • Proven experience evaluating generative AI quality - LLM-based evaluation, heuristics and custom eval frameworks - and using observability/tracing tools such as LangSmith, Arize Phoenix or Langfuse
  • Production deployment experience on at least one major cloud such as AWS, Azure or GCP with containerization and CI/CD
  • Sound judgment under ambiguity - scoping, sequencing and making the call on speed vs. quality vs. scope
  • English at C1 level

Nice to Have

  • Experience designing experiments, A/B testing and iterating on AI products against real user behavior and business metrics
  • Background in NLP, Data Science or applied ML with experience moving models into production
  • Familiarity with MCP, A2A and Agent Skills and emerging agent standards
  • Experience with enterprise AI platforms such as AWS Bedrock AgentCore, Databricks Genie or Microsoft Foundry
  • Exposure to AI governance, security and compliance including guardrails and prompt-injection prevention

We Offer

  • Hybrid work environment in Bulgaria
  • Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI-native solutions
  • Collaborative environment with SMEs and end-users

About the Company

[Company description if present]

Job Details

Company name:
EPAM
Location:
Bulgaria
Work Mode:
Hybrid
Posted on TheJob:
Jul 5, 2026
Last checked:
Jul 5, 2026
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