Lead Forward Deployed Engineer
Posted yesterday
The role in short
Lead a team of engineers to build and deploy AI-driven analytics, data pipelines, and risk models for Army sustainment and supply chain programs.
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.
Lead Forward Deployed Engineer – Defense Supply Chain Risk Programs
Location: Huntsville, Alabama (Hybrid Position)
Department: Federal Programs
Type: Full-Time
Program Summary
Exiger is seeking a Lead Forward Deployed Engineer to expert guidance, direction, and organize the delivery of solutions and scale delivery of advanced analytics and AI-enabled capabilities supporting Army sustainment and supply chain risk management programs. This role drives the end-to-end execution of data-driven solutions—including AI/LLMs, data pipelines, and risk models—that enhance visibility, resilience, and readiness across the defense industrial base.
The Lead Forward Deployed Engineer will operate at the intersection of program leadership, data engineering, and sustainment operations. The successful candidate will collaborate closely with engineers, data scientists, and Army stakeholders to translate mission requirements into scalable, technically sound analytics workflows that directly inform risk mitigation and acquisition decisions across Army portfolios.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and manage a team of engineers developing for analytics and AI-driven solutions supporting Army sustainment, acquisition, and supply chain risk management missions.
- Direct the development and deployment of databases, data pipelines, risk models, mitigation strategies, and analytic workflows to identify and mitigate systemic supply chain vulnerabilities.
- Drive program execution by defining technical methodologies, prioritizing development milestones, and managing delivery of mission-ready analytical capabilities.
- Translate complex sustainment and acquisition requirements into actionable tasks for engineering and data science teams.
- Oversee QA/QC for data and model outputs, ensuring results are technically valid, reproducible, and operationally relevant to Army decision-makers.
- Provide technical oversight of analytics integration into sustainment workflows, ensuring compliance with Army policy and information assurance standards.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams—including engineers, product research analysts, and industrial base experts—to deliver measurable mission impact.
- Facilitate coordination between technical teams, program leadership, and Army stakeholders, ensuring program transparency, accountability, and timely reporting.
Qualifications – Required
- 10+ years of experience in front-end, back-end, or full-stack software development leading data analytics, AI/ML, or risk management programs for federal or defense customers.
- Proven record of managing AI- and data-driven programs supporting defense sustainment, logistics, or acquisition missions.
- Intermediate to advanced proficiency in Python, including hands-on experience with data manipulation, validation, and analytics (e.g., pandas, NumPy, or similar libraries).
- Strong SQL skills, capable of writing and optimizing queries for large, complex datasets.
- Hands-on experience with Snowflake for querying, data validation, and analytics — active Snowflake user strongly preferred.
- Familiarity with data pipelines, ETL processes, and workflow orchestration in support of large-scale analytics environments.
- Demonstrated ability to bridge technical development and mission objectives, ensuring solutions are both feasible and impactful.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to clearly convey technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
- U.S. Citizenship required.
- Ability to obtain and retain a U.S. Government security clearance.
Qualifications – Preferred
- Prior experience in software development and artificial intelligence.
- Familiarity with supply chain risk management, industrial base analysis, or production sustainment data
- Experience working with AI/LLM development workflows, including prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and model evaluation.
- Proven experience validating analytics outputs and data transformations within cloud data environments.
- Background in or exposure to mechanical, industrial, or systems engineering concepts as they relate to manufacturing feasibility and readiness analysis.
Why Join Exiger?
At Exiger, we are helping the Army strengthen the resilience, transparency, and security of the defense industrial base through next-generation analytics and AI. Our work supports sustainment readiness, acquisition modernization, and national defense priorities—making this a unique opportunity to lead technical programs that have real operational impact.
We’re an amazing place to work. Why?
- 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.
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.
- 1LLMs, RAG and agents
They wrote: “Experience working with AI/LLM development workflows, including prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and model evaluation.”
How do you know an LLM feature is good enough to ship?
How to answer
Why they ask: Evals are what separate a demo from production. Many roles list them by name.
- Write 50–200 real examples with expected outcomes, with customer experts
- Agree on a pass bar and the errors that are never acceptable
- Score automatically where possible; review a sample by hand
- Re-run on every prompt or model change, and watch live traffic after launch
Tip: Describe a test set built with the customer, a pass bar agreed up front, and checks that run on every change.
- 2Data and SQL
They wrote: “Familiarity with data pipelines, ETL processes, and workflow orchestration in support of large-scale analytics environments.”
How would you design a daily pipeline that feeds customer data into our product?
How to answer
Why they ask: Tests basic data engineering: scheduling, failures, re-runs and monitoring.
- Extract with timestamps or change tracking, not full dumps, when possible
- Transform in steps you can re-run without creating duplicates
- Validate row counts and key fields before loading
- Alert a person on failure, with enough detail to fix it
Tip: Make re-running safe (same input, same result) and say how you'd know it failed.
- 3Cloud, deployment and security
They wrote: “Ability to obtain and retain 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.
- 4Discovery and scoping
They wrote: “Translate complex sustainment and acquisition requirements into actionable tasks for engineering and data science teams.”
Tell me about a time the customer asked for one thing but needed another.
How to answer
Why they ask: Good FDEs spot when a request is a guess at a solution. They want proof you can redirect a customer without losing their trust.
- What they asked for, and the detail that made you doubt it
- How you tested the doubt (shadowed users, looked at logs, ran a quick prototype)
- How you made the case to the customer
- What shipped and what changed for them
Tip: Pick a story where you checked your hunch with data or users before pushing back.
- 5Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Provide technical oversight of analytics integration into sustainment workflows, ensuring compliance with Army policy and information assurance standards.”
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.
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