Role Overview
The Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer, Federal role at Deepgram is an opportunity based remotely out of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area to embed directly with strategic federal accounts and lead complex Voice AI platform deployments. This position suits an autonomous engineer with an active Top Secret clearance who thrives in ambiguous environments and wants to drive mission impact for government agencies.
Key Responsibilities
Own technical delivery across federal deployments, guiding projects from initial prototype to stable production.
Embed deeply with federal customers to design and build mission-critical applications powered by Voice AI models.
Lead technical discovery and solution design for federal prospects while partnering with Account Executives to navigate complex procurement cycles.
Prototype and build full-stack integrations utilizing Python, JavaScript, Rust, or comparable stacks.
Enable successful deployments across customer environments by delivering observable systems spanning from infrastructure to applications.
Proactively guide federal stakeholders on maximizing operational value, performance optimization, and deployment strategies.
Scope work, sequence delivery, remove blockers early, and make deliberate trade-offs between scope, speed, and quality.
Build and manage relationships with customer leadership and technical stakeholders to ensure successful scaling.
Write code directly when clarity or momentum depends on it.
Codify working patterns into tools, playbooks, reference architectures, and building blocks for the broader team.
Share field feedback with Product and Engineering to influence model and product development.
Serve as an escalation point for complex technical issues in federal deployments.
Analyze deployment patterns to identify product improvement opportunities and inform federal go-to-market strategy.
Requirements
Active Top Secret clearance, or equivalent.
5+ years of engineering or technical deployment experience, ideally in customer-facing or government environments.
Strong software engineering background with professional development experience in at least one modern programming language like Python or JavaScript.
Proven ability to scope and deliver complex systems in fast-moving or ambiguous contexts.
Experience building and deploying production systems in government or similarly constrained environments.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to translate technical concepts for senior government leadership and other stakeholders.
Track record of navigating complex sales or procurement cycles in the federal space.
Willingness to travel up to 50%, including on-site work at government facilities.
Nice to Have
Experience with speech recognition, NLP, AI/Voice agents, or related AI technologies.
Familiarity with cloud deployment models including AWS GovCloud and Azure Government, alongside Kubernetes and Terraform.
Experience building or deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models with an understanding of model behavior effects.
Knowledge of government compliance frameworks such as FedRAMP and FISMA.
Experience with API-first products and developer tools.
Background in sales methodologies like MEDDIC or Solution Selling within government contexts.
Experience developing automation solutions, self-service tools, and technical documentation for customer enablement.
Skills and Tools
Python
JavaScript
Rust
AWS GovCloud
Azure Government
Kubernetes
Terraform
NLP
Voice AI technologies
Salary and Benefits
Annual Salary Range: $180,000 to $245,000 USD
About the Company
Deepgram provides real-time APIs for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and building production-grade voice agents at scale, serving over 200,000 developers and 1,300 organizations worldwide. The company operates with an AI-first mindset where active experimentation and adaptation to advanced AI tools are core to daily operations. Legitimate recruitment communications from Deepgram originate exclusively from an @deepgram.com email address.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should visit the official Deepgram careers page to submit an application for this role.
