Forward Deployed Engineer

About Us

EdgeRunner AI is an American dual-use research lab building frontier open-weight AI for the U.S. military and heavily regulated industries. Our goal is to increase our chance of winning the fight by arming the warfighter with domain-specific AI agents that create a common operating picture, enhance battle readiness from training to deployment, mitigate risk in live combat, and bridge the gap between human and machine.

Applied AI has the potential to transform the DoD, but adoption has been blocked due to several factors: lack of domain expertise, opaque training data, cost-prohibitive and compute-intensive applications, potentially dangerous biases, and dependency upon internet access that requires moving data to the cloud. We seek to solve these challenges by developing safe, secure, and transparent AI solutions that can run on-device at the tactical edge.

We’ve partnered with organizations critical to our national security, including the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Space Force, and have raised $17.5M in funding from leading VCs, including Madrona Ventures, HP Tech Ventures, Four Rivers Ventures, and Alumni Ventures.

 

About the Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will be a field "CTO" for key customer engagements and projects. You will work closely with our core engineering, research, and business development teams, directly supporting customers critical to our national security. You’ll own the prototyping, development, and deployment of software solutions that support specific customer needs.

You will travel to meet with customers on-site for prototyping, scoping, and implementing new solutions. You will work closely with our engineers, researchers, product leaders, and former military officers to build solutions that increase our chance of winning the fight using AI.

Strong candidates will have experience performing experimentation in one or more of the following areas:

• 5+ years of experience building and deploying production software, including desktop applications and/or containerized services
• Experience packaging and distributing desktop software onto government-managed endpoints; experience shipping AI-enabled desktop applications that run locally on edge devices (e.g. laptops and field hardware in limited-connectivity or offline settings) is a plus
• Experience deploying containerized applications (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, Helm) into government systems and networks (e.g. Iron Bank, Platform One, or IL4/IL5/IL6 environments); experience with GPU-enabled containers (e.g. NVIDIA Container Toolkit, GPU Operator) is a plus
• Familiarity with Large Language Models and agentic workflows, including how they’re served, integrated with tools, and evaluated in real-world use
• Experience developing and deploying software compliant with DoD Risk Management Framework (RMF)
• Experience interfacing with government owned IT systems (for example, data platforms, IdAM providers, SIEM, CDSs, etc)
• Experience working with government IT and PEOs to scope technical requirements, architecture, and integrations
• Experience working with end users to scope user requirements, conduct user testing, and gain product feedback
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills

Candidates must be eligible to receive a TS/SCI clearance, and strong candidates will have an active clearance. Under federal law, U.S. citizenship is required to obtain a security clearance.

Travel required up to 50% of time to meet with customers and deliver capabilities.

EdgeRunner AI is a Series-A startup, and we move quickly. Preference will be given to candidates who have a track record of taking the initiative, who can understand how business objectives translate into technical solutions, who can interact with customers, and who are comfortable with ambiguity. Though we work as a team, every researcher is a self-starter, a project owner, and can operate independently when needed.

We offer competitive salary, equity, and benefits, with individual pay determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training. Benefits include:

• 100% covered health, dental, and vision for employees; 50% for dependents
• 100% remote first culture; you can work from anywhere in the US full-time
• 401K program
• Unlimited PTO
• IT stipend for purchasing new equipment

EdgeRunner AI is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

Even if you don’t perfectly match our job description and requirements, please still apply if you are passionate about our mission and this technology.