Forward Deployed Engineer
Posted yesterday
The role in short
Embed with government and defense customers to design, implement, and maintain production-grade AI/ML solutions and data pipelines for supply chain and risk analytics.
Who We Are:
Exiger is the AI partner for supply chain and procurement automation. Its centralized 1EXIGER.AI platform allows organizations to manage their entire operating network, from parts to suppliers, regulators, and customers, through an autonomous agentic workforce that learns, adapts, and augments with every decision. The AI-native platform, combined with the largest supply chain knowledge asset, empowers 550+ global customers, including 150 Fortune 500 and 80+ government and defense industrial organizations, to act first. Exiger is FedRAMP® authorized and a 2x Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Supplier Risk Management.
Forward Deployed Engineer
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
Work Environment: Hybrid
Role Summary:
Exiger is transforming how governments and global enterprises manage supply chain, defense, and geopolitical risk. Our AI-powered platform equips the world’s most important institutions with the intelligence they need to protect critical infrastructure, secure national interests, and make data-driven operational decisions.
From identifying counterfeit parts in defense supply chains to anticipating geopolitical risk exposure, Exiger enables mission owners to act with clarity and confidence in complex, high-stakes environments.
Forward Deployed AI Engineers work directly with government and defense customers to understand their most complex operational challenges and design and implement AI-driven solutions to solve them.
Our customers rely on Exiger’s platform to support mission-critical operations — often beginning with open-ended questions such as:
- “Where are vulnerabilities hidden in our supply chain?”
- “How can we proactively detect and mitigate risk before it impacts readiness?”
- “How do we modernize fragmented legacy systems into a unified intelligence capability?”
As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer, you will combine engineering depth, AI/ML expertise, and mission understanding to deliver scalable, production-grade solutions that drive measurable real-world impact.
You will operate at the intersection of engineering, data science, and mission delivery — embedded alongside customer stakeholders and internal teams. Working in small, high-trust teams, you will own projects end-to-end — from architecture and data ingestion through model deployment, integration, and executive-level briefings.
You will not just build models — you will ensure they function reliably in production, under real-world operational constraints.
What You'll Do:
- Design, implement, and maintain scalable data pipelines for ingesting, cleansing, and transforming supply chain and risk-related datasets.
- Apply AI/ML methods to enhance predictive analytics, anomaly detection, and risk identification within SCRM workflows.
- Integrate AI-driven analytics into Exiger’s SaaS platform through APIs, data services, and system interfaces.
- Partner with program directors, data scientists, and software engineers to operationalize models into production systems.
- Cleanse and enrich customer provided data.
- Develop and maintain dashboards, data visualizations, and reporting solutions to enable decision-making by senior government stakeholders.
- Ensure quality, integrity, and security of data across all program implementations.
- Support delivery of transformation projects by modernizing customer data environments and enabling advanced risk analytics.
- Contribute to agile delivery cycles, from design and testing through deployment.
- Periodically provide updates on data pipelines, AI performance metrics, and customer value realization.
What You Need:
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Data Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or related technical field.
- 5+ years of experience in data engineering, applied AI/ML, or scalable system integration
- Demonstrated experience operationalizing AI models beyond experimentation
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance
- Deep proficiency in Python and SQL, with experience designing scalable data architectures
- Experience building and deploying AI/ML systems in production environments
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Snowflake, Redshift) and secure system integration
- Ability to translate ambiguous mission problems into structured technical solutions
- Comfort working directly with senior government stakeholders
- Strong systems thinking across data pipelines, APIs, models, and visualization layers
- Ability to operate independently in dynamic, high-stakes environments
- Willingness to travel as needed to support customer engagements
Why You'll Love Working at Exiger:
- High-performance culture rooted in accountability, collaboration, and a shared commitment to excellence.
- Discretionary Time Off for all employees, with no maximum limits on time off
- Industry leading health, vision, and dental benefits
- Competitive compensation package
- 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave
- Flexible, hybrid approach to working from home and in the office where applicable
- Focus on wellness and employee health through stipends and dedicated wellness programming
- Purposeful career development programs with reimbursement provided for educational certifications
#LI-hybrid
Exiger is named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Supplier Risk Management, twice selected as one of Fast Company's 'Brands That Matter,' and recipient of the Third Party Risk Association's Innovator Award, Exiger's technology has been recognized by leading analyst evaluations and 50+ awards. Learn more at Exiger.com and follow Exiger on LinkedIn.
At Exiger, our values define how we work and why we lead. We are mission-inspired, imagination-driven, trust-anchored, and compassion-focused—committed to building technology that makes the world safer, more transparent, and more resilient.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or protected veteran status, or any other legally protected basis, in accordance with applicable law.
Exiger’s hybrid work policy is periodically reviewed and adjusted to align with evolving business needs.
Prep for this interview
5 questions likely to come up at Exiger, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1Cloud, deployment and security
They wrote: “Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance”
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.
- 2Discovery and scoping
They wrote: “Develop and maintain dashboards, data visualizations, and reporting solutions to enable decision-making by senior government stakeholders.”
The customer's finance lead says your report “looks off” but can't point to a number. What do you do?
How to answer
Why they ask: Vague complaints are normal. They test whether you stay calm and turn it into something checkable.
- Ask them to walk you through how they read the report and what they expected
- Compare one number end to end against their own source
- Write down each metric's definition and get them to agree it
- Fix it, then add a check that would have caught it
Tip: Sit with the person and the report together. Usually the definitions differ, not the math.
- 3Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Integrate AI-driven analytics into Exiger’s SaaS platform through APIs, data services, and system interfaces.”
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.
- 4Data and SQL
They wrote: “Design, implement, and maintain scalable data pipelines for ingesting, cleansing, and transforming supply chain and risk-related datasets.”
The customer's data is spread across five systems that disagree. How do you get one clean view?
How to answer
Why they ask: Real deployments rarely have one source of truth. They want a practical approach, not a perfect one.
- List each system and what it's the best source for
- Pick matching keys and decide how to handle records that don't match
- Load into one place with clear rules, and keep the raw copies
- Show the customer the mismatches; they often fix the source
Tip: Name the system the business trusts most for each field, and get the customer to agree.
- 5Coding
They wrote: “Partner with program directors, data scientists, and software engineers to operationalize models into production systems.”
How do you keep quality high when you ship fast at a customer site?
How to answer
Why they ask: Speed is the job, but broken code at a customer is costly. They want your guardrails.
- Tests for the parts that touch customer data or money
- Code review even when it's fast, ideally by someone on the product team
- Feature flags and an easy way to roll back
- Clean up the shortcuts in the next release, and write them down
Tip: Name the few checks you never skip, and what you skip on purpose.
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