Forward Deployed Engineer
Posted 2 days ago
The role in short
Embed with business and operating teams to identify opportunities and build, deploy, and support production-ready AI solutions, workflow automations, and integrations.
Forward Deployed Engineer
About Us
At Lewis Energy Group, we are a vertically integrated exploration and production (E&P) company and a leading natural gas producer in South Texas and across the nation. With operations in South Texas and Mexico, we take pride in our long-standing commitment to excellence, innovation, and community engagement.
What sets us apart is our family-oriented work culture, built over decades of dedication and teamwork. This culture drives the passion we bring to our work and the positive impact we strive to make in the communities where we operate.
The Forward Deployed Engineer will Embed with business and operating teams to identify high-value opportunities to improve how work is performed and designs, builds, deploys, and supports secure, production-ready AI solutions, workflow automations, integrations, and decision-support tools. Owns delivery from workflow discovery through production adoption and measurable business results while developing reusable technical patterns and strengthening organizational AI capability.
Responsibilities
Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties may be assigned.
- Works with business users and subject-matter experts to understand workflows, requirements, decision points, pain points, systems, and data dependencies.
- Designs, develops, tests, deploys, and troubleshoots AI agents, copilots, workflow automations, integrations, lightweight applications, and decision-support tools.
- Develops and maintains code, prompts, configurations, connectors, tests, documentation, and deployment artifacts.
- Coordinates with business owners, the AI Architect, IT, Security, Legal, and data owners to meet architecture, identity, access, data-handling, security, and responsible-use requirements.
- Evaluates and prioritizes opportunities based on business value, feasibility, data readiness, risk, and time-to-value.
- Defines and executes evaluations for solution quality, grounding, reliability, safety, and user experience.
- Reviews adoption, production performance, user feedback, incidents, and improvement opportunities for deployed solutions.
- Delivers training, office hours, demonstrations, playbooks, and role-based adoption support.
- Travels to field offices or operating locations for discovery, implementation, training, or support.
- Captures reusable code, connectors, patterns, documentation, and deployment pipelines for use across teams.
Qualifications
Education and Experience
- Bachelor's degree from a four-year college or university
- Minimum three years of related experience and/or training
Work Location: Onsite - Candidates must be able to work full-time from our San Antonio office.
Computer Skills
Advanced proficiency in at least one modern programming language such as:
- Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, or C#; APIs; Git; testing; CI/CD; workflow automation; large language models; RAG; AI agents; tool integration; and cloud or enterprise application platforms.
- Azure, Fabric, Power Platform, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Graph experience preferred.
Certificates, Licenses, and Registrations
- Relevant cloud, Azure, Power Platform, Fabric, security, or software-development certifications preferred.
- A valid driver's license may be required for site travel.
Other Skills and Qualifications
- Consultative discovery, software engineering, process analysis, requirements definition, solution design, testing, technical documentation, stakeholder management, facilitation, training, change adoption, and production troubleshooting.
- Ability to work with confidential and company-sensitive information, comply with information-security and responsible-AI requirements, manage multiple engagements, work independently in unfamiliar business areas, and travel periodically to field or operating locations.
Your Benefits
Lewis Energy Group appreciates the hard work and dedication you bring to our team every day. To do our part, we are committed to keeping your benefits affordable and beneficial for you and your eligible family members. Lewis Energy Group strives to provide benefits that meet your needs, are easy to understand and use, and provide excellent value for affordable costs.
- Insurance: Medical/Dental/Vision/ Basic Life and AD&D/and other benefit options to meet your personal needs
- Retirement: 401K with immediate matching contribution
- Annual Discretionary Bonus
- Generous Paid Time Off and Paid Holidays
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) – Free, confidential support for you and your dependents
- Wellness & Company Events throughout the year
Equal Opportunity Employer
Lewis Energy Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship status, protected veteran status, genetic information, or physical or mental disability.
Prep for this interview
5 questions likely to come up at Lewis Energy Group, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, or C#; APIs; Git; testing; CI/CD; workflow automation; large language models; RAG; AI agents; tool integration; and cloud or enterprise application platforms.”
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.
- 2Cloud, deployment and security
They wrote: “Relevant cloud, Azure, Power Platform, Fabric, security, or software-development certifications preferred.”
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.
- 3Discovery and scoping
They wrote: “Works with business users and subject-matter experts to understand workflows, requirements, decision points, pain points, systems, and data dependencies.”
A customer says “we want AI in our claims process.” What do you ask in the first meeting?
How to answer
Why they ask: Most FDE work starts this vague. They want to hear you find the real problem before you pick a tool.
- Map the current process: who touches a claim, in what order, with which systems
- Find the slowest or most error-prone step and ask what it costs them
- Agree on one measurable goal (for example time per claim, or error rate)
- Ask what data you can access, and who signs off on security
Tip: Ask about the work, not the technology. Who does it today, how long it takes, what a mistake costs, and how they'd know it got better.
- 4LLMs, RAG and agents
They wrote: “Designs, develops, tests, deploys, and troubleshoots AI agents, copilots, workflow automations, integrations, lightweight applications, and decision-support tools.”
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.
- 5Travel
They wrote: “Travels to field offices or operating locations for discovery, implementation, training, or support.”
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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