Mistral AIApplied AI - Forward Deployed Engineer - Defense
Mistral AI is hiring an Applied AI - Forward Deployed Engineer - Defense in Paris, France. Level rates it ; you can apply on Mistral AI.
Level's read on this job
- Builds AI ●●●● is how Level rates this forward deployed engineer role: the job is building AI systems.
- The posting mentions LangChain, Hugging Face and PyTorch among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Mistral AI has 234 other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Design, deploy, and maintain advanced AI solutions and generative AI applications for sovereign and defense institutions.
About Mistral
Mistral provides full-stack AI solutions: from frontier models to developer tools, applications, and compute. We partner with enterprises tackling the hardest problems across high-stakes industries like finance, manufacturing, defense, healthcare, and the public sector, co-creating customized AI systems that they can run on their terms.
We are a dynamic, collaborative team passionate about AI and its potential to transform society. Our diverse workforce thrives in competitive environments and is committed to driving innovation. Our teams are distributed between Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. We are creative, low-ego and team-spirited.
About the jobThe Applied AI for Defense team is Mistral’s specialized unit dedicated to delivering high-impact, secure AI solutions for institutions and organizations operating in highly regulated and strategic environments. We work hand-in-hand with clients to design, deploy, and maintain AI systems that meet the highest standards of reliability, security, and operational excellence.
Our team combines deep technical expertise with a rigorous approach to compliance and risk management, ensuring that every solution is both cutting-edge and fully aligned with the unique constraints of our partners.
Mistral AI is seeking an Applied AI Engineer to join this team. You will be responsible for the technical design, implementation, and deployment of AI solutions tailored to the needs of critical infrastructure and sovereign institutions. Your work will directly contribute to projects with significant societal and operational impact.
What you will do• Individually deploy AI solutions into production for use cases with significant operational and strategic impact.
• Develop state-of-the-art GenAI applications tailored to the specific needs of sovereign institutions and critical infrastructure, driving technological transformation in collaboration with our customers.
• Work closely with our researchers, AI engineers, and product teams on complex customer projects involving advanced fine-tuning, LLM applications, and contributions to our open-source codebases for inference and fine-tuning.
• Participate in pre-sales discussions to understand the needs, challenges, and aspirations of potential clients, providing technical guidance on Mistral’s products and technologies to diverse stakeholders.
• Collaborate with our product and science teams to continuously improve our offerings based on customer feedback, with a focus on security, compliance, and performance.
How we work in Applied AI• We care about people and outputs.
• What matters is what you ship, not the time you spend on it
• Bureaucracy is where urgency goes to vanish. You talk to whoever you need to talk to. The best idea wins, whether it comes from a principal engineer or someone in their first week.
• Always ask why. The best solutions come from deep understanding, not from copying what worked before
• We say what we mean. Feedback is direct, timely, and given because we care.
• No politics. Low ego, high standards.
• We embrace an unstructured environment and find joy in it.
About you• Fluent in English.
• PhD or Master's in AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or related field.
• 2+ years of experience in AI/ML
• Proven track record of leading teams to deliver complex AI projects from prototyping to production.
• Deep expertise in fine-tuning LLMs, advanced RAG, agentic systems, and deploying NLP applications at scale.
• Proficient in Python, PyTorch, and modern AI frameworks (LangChain, HuggingFace). Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps tools a plus.
• Strong software engineering skills: API design, backend/full-stack development, system architecture.
• Excels in technical communication with technical and non-technical audiences, including executives.
• Thrives in fast-paced collaborative environments and is passionate about mentoring technical talent.
It would be great if you• Have experience with React or other frontend frameworks.
• Have experience with Deep Learning in PyTorch
• Contributed to open-source projects in the LLM or AI space.
• Have experience in customer-facing roles with a focus on enterprise AI adoption.
• Eligibility: must hold citizenship in the target territory (France for now).
• Clearable: must meet all local requirements for high-level security clearance (e.g., no criminal record, fulfillment of national service obligations).
What We Offer
We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your well-being, growth, and work-life balance. Benefits vary by country and may include healthcare coverage, parental leave, retirement plans, relocation support, wellness programs, meal and transportation allowances, and other location-specific perks.
For the most up-to-date details on benefits available in your location, please refer to our Benefits page.
Privacy Policy
Your privacy matters to us. You can learn more about how we handle your personal data in our Applicant Privacy Policy.
How we rate this
Applied AI - Forward Deployed Engineer - Defense at Mistral AI rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Also common in forward deployed engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- Typical forward deployed engineer job
- $180k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical forward deployed engineer figure when pay comes up. See forward deployed engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
- Walk me through fine-tuning a model: what data did you use, and how did you check the result?
- How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
- What NLP problem have you worked on, and how did you measure whether it actually worked?
- Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: RAG, Fine-tuning, ML Ops, NLP, and Machine learning. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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