AI Field Engineer - AI Natives

Stack

Responsibilities

• ▹Build end-to-end POCs and MVPs with customer engineering teams inside their own codebases
• ▹Architect inference foundations for customers whose core product is built on GenAI
• ▹Run load tests and establish latency, throughput, and cost baselines
• ▹Deploy and validate new model families on inference frameworks (vLLM, SGLang)
• ▹Guide customers on model selection and fine-tuning strategy (SFT, DPO, RFT)
• ▹Build and run fine-tuning pipelines directly with customers
• ▹Lead structured discovery conversations to unpack customer pain points
• ▹Own the technical relationship from first engagement through production, embedding as an engineering peer
• ▹Spend time on-site with customers, building trust in person
• ▹Translate recurring customer pain points into concrete product proposals

Requirements

• ▹5+ years in a hands-on, customer-facing technical role (Forward Deployed Engineer, Applied AI Engineer, Solutions Architect, ML Engineer with field exposure, or technical founder)
• ▹Demonstrated ability to build production software with customers
• ▹Strong Python skills, comfortable with production code
• ▹Familiarity with Kubernetes and infrastructure engineering
• ▹Working knowledge of the LLM stack: inference tradeoffs, model serving, fine-tuning workflows
• ▹Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) and deploying models on GPU infrastructure
• ▹Exceptional communication across executive and engineering levels
• ▹Experience building or integrating agentic systems or tool-use chains

Nice to have

• ▹10+ years in technical field or engineering roles
• ▹Experience with inference serving frameworks (vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM)
• ▹Prior experience at a forward-deployed or embedded engineering company (e.g. Palantir, Scale AI, Anthropic, OpenAI, BCG X, McKinsey QuantumBlack)
• ▹Prior experience as a technical founder or early engineer at an AI-native company
• ▹Track record taking GenAI POCs from prototype to production-scale deployments
• ▹Experience with hyperscaler AI platforms (Azure AI Foundry, AWS Bedrock/SageMaker, GCP Vertex)

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹$200,000-$260,000 on-target earnings plus equity
• ▹Meaningful equity in a fast-growing startup
• ▹Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package

About the company

Fireworks is building the future of generative AI infrastructure, delivering one of the industry's fastest and most scalable inference platforms. A Series C company valued at $4 billion, backed by investors including Benchmark, Sequoia, Lightspeed, and Index, and founded by veterans of Meta PyTorch and Google Vertex AI.