Forward Deployed Engineer Lead (Principal Applied AI Engineer)

About the role

The Forward Deployed Engineer Lead sets the standard for turning business ambition into production reality within Avanade Next. This player‑coach role blends business insight, solution architecture and engineering leadership to help clients realize AI‑enabled outcomes.

Key responsibilities

• Partner with clients and internal architects to translate business priorities into practical AI‑enabled solutions.
• Define and evolve AI‑native engineering practices, including agent‑assisted development, automated evaluation, reusable components and observability.
• Own the engineering standards for the Forward Deployed Engineer track, covering architecture patterns, testing, production readiness and operational support.
• Develop the career pathway and enablement model, reskilling traditional delivery engineers into AI‑native practitioners.
• Deploy personally on complex, strategic engagements to ensure production‑grade delivery.

Required profile

• 8+ years of software or AI engineering experience with senior or lead accountability for production systems.
• Hands‑on expertise in agentic engineering (orchestration, retrieval, tool use, evaluation, observability, failure handling).
• Proven ability to set and enforce engineering standards across teams.
• Experience assessing and hiring engineers at scale with a defensible quality bar.
• Client‑facing credibility and willingness to work directly on customer sites.

Required skills

• Deep, current hands‑on experience with the Microsoft AI stack.
• Experience with Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry and Avanade Agentic Platform.
• Strong knowledge of AI‑native engineering practices and agentic development.