Sr Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, US Government

Amazon is hiring a Sr Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, US Government in Arlington, United States. It pays $168k-$227k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Amazon.

Level's read on this job

On Level's scale, this forward deployed engineer role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
Tools and skills the posting cites include AWS, prompt engineering and RAG.
Level classifies it as a senior role.
Level lists 21,000+ other open roles at Amazon.
The role was posted within the past week.

AI in this role

Build and deploy production-grade AI systems, multi-agent architectures, and decision intelligence platforms.

aws

prompt-engineeringragai-agentsai-systemssoftware-engineeringmulti-agent-systemsproduction-engineering

Application deadline: Nov 6, 2026

This position requires that the candidate selected be a US Citizen and currently possess and maintain an active Top Secret security clearance with SCI eligibility or higher.

A Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) embeds directly inside a strategic enterprise customer to design, build, deploy, and run AI-powered production systems alongside the customer's engineering team. FDEs write production-grade software and own outcomes end-to-end, from prototype through enterprise-scale deployment, combining the technical rigor of an AWS SDE with the urgency and ownership required to deliver measurable customer business outcomes. They create reusable architectures, patterns, and engineering mechanisms that scale the entire FDE practice. This position requires that the candidate selected be a US Citizen and currently possess and maintain an active US Government Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility (or higher).

Key job responsibilities
- Lead technical delivery across customer engagements. Own the technical strategy and execution for complex, multi-workstream customer AI programs. Make architecture decisions that span multiple services and organizational boundaries. Align technical approach with the customer's long-term technology strategy. Requires up to 25% travel.
- Architect and build production AI systems at scale: multi-agent orchestration, enterprise retrieval systems, and decision intelligence platforms for the most complex engagements. Drive clarity where neither the business problem nor the technology approach is fully defined. Build production systems that handle enterprise-scale traffic and reliability requirements.
- Own production excellence across workstreams. Define operational standards, evaluation frameworks, and production-readiness criteria for AI systems. Establish mechanisms (testing strategies, observability standards, incident-response playbooks) that keep AI systems healthy.
- Scale the team's effectiveness. Define engineering patterns, contribute to the interview and hiring process, and mentor junior FDEs into independent contributors.
- Accelerate customer transformation. Identify systemic opportunities to expand AI adoption, create reusable accelerators that cut time-to-value from months to weeks, and feed learnings back into AWS services and the FDE practice.

A day in the life
A Senior FDE spends the day leading technical delivery inside the customer's environment: setting the architecture direction across workstreams, building alongside customer engineers on the hardest production AI problems, reviewing designs and code, and mentoring FDEs into independent contributors.

About the team
ABOUT AWS:

Diverse Experiences
Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Why AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

Work/Life Balance
We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.

Inclusive Team Culture
AWS values curiosity and connection. Our employee-led and company-sponsored affinity groups promote inclusion and empower our people to take pride in what makes us unique. Our inclusion events foster stronger, more collaborative teams. Our continual innovation is fueled by the bold ideas, fresh perspectives, and passionate voices our teams bring to everything we do.

Mentorship and Career Growth
We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

10047

Basic qualifications

- 5+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
- 5+ years of programming with at least one software programming language experience
- 5+ years of leading design or architecture (design patterns, reliability and scaling) of new and existing systems experience
- Experience as a mentor, tech lead or leading an engineering team
- Active US Government Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility (or higher)
- Experience leading agentic and spec-driven development at production scale (developing AI agents a plus)
- Experience with AI tools: eval frameworks, agent tooling, RAG pipelines, and prompt engineering

Preferred qualifications

- 5+ years of full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations experience
- Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent
- Current, active TS/SCI US Government Security Clearance
- Experience building complex software systems that have been successfully delivered to customers
- Experience with AWS services
- Experience building or deploying AI/ML applications at enterprise production scale
- Experience with React, TypeScript, Python, and/or Go
- Experience leading customer-facing technical projects or managing external stakeholder relationships
- 3+ years of experience working in an Agile, startup, or rapidly scaling environment

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, CO, Denver - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
USA, MD, Jessup - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
USA, VA, Arlington - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
USA, VA, Herndon - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually
USA, WA, Seattle - 168,100.00 - 227,400.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Sr Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, US Government at Amazon rates 90 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.

Classification

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.

Key facts

Sr Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), AWS Forward Deployed Engineering, US Government is an open job at Amazon.
Level rates this role AI Level 4 of 4: Builds AI.
The listed salary is $168k-$227k a year.
The role is based in US, VA, Arlington.
The job was posted on October 27, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by Amazon. Apply on Amazon

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Prompt engineeringRAGAI agentsAI SystemsSoftware EngineeringMulti Agent SystemsProduction EngineeringAWS

Also common in forward deployed engineer jobs at this level

LLM Machine learning Generative AI Google Cloud Azure Fine-tuning

Pay

This job starts at: $168k
Typical forward deployed engineer job: $180k

This posting starts 7% below the typical forward deployed engineer job. See forward deployed engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

How do you structure and test a prompt to get consistent output from a language model?
How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
Tell me about a project where ai systems was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Prompt engineering, RAG, AI agents, AI Systems, and Software Engineering. 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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