Forward Deployed Engineer – AI & Trading
Posted 2 days ago
The role in short
Embed with trading and commercial teams to rapidly prototype and deploy production-ready AI-enabled tools and agentic systems.
Our purpose is to deliver energy to the world, today and tomorrow. For over 100 years, bp has focused on discovering, developing, and producing oil and gas in the nations where we operate. We are one of the few companies globally that can provide governments and customers with an integrated energy offering. Delivering our strategy sustainably is fundamental to achieving our ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner.
About the role
Supply, Trading & Shipping (ST&S) connects bp with global traded markets. Within ST&S, Global Lightends (GLights) brings together market expertise, data and technology to create value across physical and financial light-ends markets.
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll work alongside traders and commercial teams to turn ideas into reliable AI-enabled tools.
You'll combine hands-on engineering with close user collaboration, rapidly developing solutions and taking successful prototypes through to secure, production-ready capabilities. You'll join a global engineering network across Chicago, Houston, London and Singapore, while providing close support to your regional trading teams.
What you'll bring
We're looking for someone with strong engineering capability who enjoys working closely with users to solve complex commercial problems.
You'll bring:
- Experience in software, data, AI or quantitative engineering.
- Hands-on experience with APIs, cloud services, SQL or data stores, version control, testing and CI/CD.
- Experience taking solutions from early concepts or prototypes through to reliable production use.
- Experience evaluating LLM-based tools: measuring whether outputs are correct, grounding answers in trusted data, and catching failures before users do.
- Understanding of secure engineering, access controls, monitoring and operational resilience.
- Practical experience with generative AI, agentic systems or LLM-based applications.
- Strong Python, plus experience in software, data, AI or quantitative engineering.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to work across commercial and technical teams.
- An adaptable approach and confidence working in a fast-moving environment.
- Experience in commodities, financial markets, trading or another commercially critical environment would be valuable, but isn't essential.
It would also be helpful if you have
- Experience with AWS, containers, infrastructure-as-code or observability tools.
- Familiarity with MCP, event-driven architectures or reusable integration services.
- Knowledge of market data, trading controls, AI governance or information security.
- Experience working with trading, origination, quantitative or front-office teams.
- Experience creating engineering approaches or tools that have been adopted across multiple teams.
What success looks like
You'll help GLights turn promising ideas into trusted tools that people use. Success will include:
- Faster delivery of useful AI-enabled capabilities.
- Strong adoption among trading teams.
- Reliable and well-supported production tools.
- Reusable solutions that benefit teams across locations.
- Clear improvements in efficiency, insight or decision support.
Why join us?
At bp, we provide an excellent working environment and employee benefits such as an open and inclusive culture, a great work-life balance, tremendous learning and development opportunities to craft your career path, life and health insurance, medical care package and many others.
We support our people to learn and grow in a diverse and exciting environment. We believe that our team is strengthened by diversity. We are committed to crafting an inclusive environment in which everyone is respected and treated fairly.
There are many aspects of our employees’ lives that are significant, so we offer benefits to enable your work to fit with your life. These benefits can include flexible working options, collaboration spaces in a modern office environment, and others benefits.
Reinvent your career as you help our business meet the challenges of the future. Apply now!
How much do we pay (Base)?****$167,000.00 - 253,000.00 USD Annually
*Note that the pay range listed for this position is a genuinely expected and reasonable estimate of the range of possible base compensation at the time of posting.
This position is eligible for US Benefits – Core. This position offers paid vacation depending on your years of relevant industry experience and will range from 120 – 240 hours of vacation per year for full time employees . You will also be eligible for 9 paid holidays per year and 2 personal choice holidays. You may learn more about how we calculate paid vacation and view our generous vacation and holiday schedules at Core U.S. Benefits. Bp has a parental leave policy as well, which offers up to 8 weeks’ paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child.
We offer a reward package to enable your work to fit with your life. These offerings include a discretionary annual bonus program, long-term incentive program, and generous retirement benefits that include a 401k matching program. These benefits include a pension for eligible employee.
As part of bp’s wellbeing package, bp offers access to health, vision, and dental insurance, as well as life and Short-Term Disability and Long-Term Disability. You may learn more about our generous benefits at Core U.S. Benefits.
Travel Requirement
Some travel may be required with this role, this is negotiable
Relocation Assistance:
This role is not eligible for relocation
Remote Type:
This position is a hybrid of office/remote working
Skills:
Agreements and negotiations, Agreements and negotiations, Analytical Thinking, Business Acumen, Commercial Business Development, Consultative selling skills, Continuous Learning, Customer promise execution, Customer service delivery excellence, Deal modelling and valuation, Developing and implementing strategy, Influencing, Internal alignment, Joint Venture Structuring, Listening, Loyalty Management, Marketing strategy and programmes, Negotiating value, Negotiation planning and preparation, Partner relationship management, Presenting, Sentiment and Trends, Thought Leadership, Trade discipline and compliance, Trading Fundamentals {+ 1 more}
.
Legal Disclaimer:
We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics like race, religion, color, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, veteran status or disability status. Individuals with an accessibility need may request an adjustment/accommodation related to bp’s recruiting process (e.g., accessing the job application, completing required assessments, participating in telephone screenings or interviews, etc.). If you would like to request an adjustment/accommodation related to the recruitment process, please contact us.
If you are selected for a position and depending upon your role, your employment may be contingent upon adherence to local policy. This may include pre-placement drug screening, medical review of physical fitness for the role, and background checks.
Prep for this interview
5 questions likely to come up at bp, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1LLMs, RAG and agents
They wrote: “Practical experience with generative AI, agentic systems or LLM-based applications.”
A customer wants a chatbot over their internal documents. How do you build it?
How to answer
Why they ask: RAG is the most common first project. They want the whole path, from messy files to answers people trust.
- Collect and clean the documents; handle permissions per user
- Split them into chunks, embed, and store with source links
- Retrieve, then answer with citations; say “I don't know” when retrieval is weak
- Build a test set of real questions with expected answers before launch
Tip: Spend more time on the data and on testing than on the model.
- 2Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Hands-on experience with APIs, cloud services, SQL or data stores, version control, testing and CI/CD.”
Walk me through connecting our product to a customer's internal system that has no documentation.
How to answer
Why they ask: This happens weekly in the job. They want a calm, step-by-step method.
- Find who owns the system and get read access to a test environment
- Watch real traffic or logs to learn the data shapes
- Build a thin adapter with logging around every call
- Agree on how failures get reported, and who fixes what
Tip: Talk about finding the owner of the system first. The code is the easy part.
- 3Cloud, deployment and security
They wrote: “Experience with AWS, containers, infrastructure-as-code or observability tools.”
The customer's security team sends a 200-question review. How do you handle it?
How to answer
Why they ask: Security reviews often block deals. FDEs help get through them.
- Start from your company's standard answers (SOC 2 report, past reviews)
- Answer clearly; don't oversell
- Bring in your security team for anything you're unsure of
- Keep the new answers for the next customer
Tip: Reuse past answers, flag honest gaps, and offer a call for the hard questions.
- 4Coding
They wrote: “Strong Python, plus experience in software, data, AI or quantitative engineering.”
Here's a CSV export from a customer. Write a script that cleans it and loads it into our API.
How to answer
Why they ask: Very close to real FDE work. They watch how you handle bad rows and failures.
- Read with a proper CSV parser; check the header first
- Validate each row and collect errors, not crash on the first one
- Send in batches with retries and a clear report at the end
- Write one or two quick tests for the parsing
Tip: Talk through edge cases out loud: encodings, missing fields, duplicates, rate limits.
- 5Travel
They wrote: “Some travel may be required with this role, this is negotiable”
How do you handle being on the road with customers for weeks at a time?
How to answer
Why they ask: Many FDE roles involve regular travel. They check you know what you're signing up for.
- Your past travel or on-site experience
- How you stay productive away from the team
- What travel level works for you, said plainly
Tip: Be honest about what works for you. A mismatch here hurts both sides later.
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