Principal Forward-Deployed Engineer

Job responsibilities

• Shaping the bet. Running concept sprints with client executives, product managers and designers. Turning a broad ambition into something scoped and testable. Agreeing what success looks like, and what would tell us to stop, before anyone writes code.
• Winning the work. Partnering with account leads to shape technical narratives on new pursuits. Supporting the pod construct and 3/3/3 commercial arc with client leaders with a clear understanding of pricing parameters. Owning technical scope in proposals, presenting confidently, and maintaining focus when discovery reveals core project requirements.
• Proving it. Setting the technical direction for prototyping: what to build, what to fake, what to buy, and what evidence each prototype needs to produce. Pairing with designers and engineers so prototypes can actually be tested with users. Standing up proper evaluation for anything AI-powered, including golden datasets, offline evals, human review, guardrails, and cost and latency budgets.
• Landing it. Owning an architecture that ships in three months and stands up long-term. Establishing delivery systems around it: agentic workflows with human oversight, continuous delivery, test strategy, observability, security, and privacy by design. On larger initiatives, maintaining architectural alignment across streams so each can ship independently.
• Advising. Serving as a trusted technology advisor to key stakeholders. Aligning technical options with business outcomes. Presenting to steering committees, facilitating executive workshops, and shaping new opportunities with client partners.
• Developing team members. Pairing, reviewing code, and mentoring colleagues. Creating reusable practices to support team continuity. Mentoring engineers onto lighthouse projects and sharing knowledge broadly across internal and external communities.

Technical Skills

• Programming languages: Strong proficiency in Python or TypeScript, with working knowledge of the other, alongside experience shipping production code in at least one additional language.
• AI & LLM ecosystems: Hands-on experience with major LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Vertex), RAG and vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Elastic), and agent frameworks (LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex).
• AI evaluation & observability: Proficiency in offline/online evaluations, golden datasets, LLM-as-judge patterns, tracing, and cost monitoring using tools like Braintrust, LangSmith, Langfuse, or custom harnesses.
• AI-assisted development & prototyping: Active adoption of AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Replit) and rapid prototyping platforms (v0, Lovable, Figma Make) to accelerate delivery.
• Cloud platforms & DevOps: Deep expertise in AWS, GCP, or Azure, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), containerization (Kubernetes, Docker), and automated CI/CD pipelines.
• Software architecture & integration: Solid foundation in API design, event-driven streaming (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub), microservices, and integrating with enterprise legacy systems.
• Data engineering & analytics: Experience with modern data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) and orchestration tools (dbt, Airflow, Dagster) to design architectures for AI workloads.
• Frontend development & modern practices: Capability to build prototypes using React/Next.js, alongside engineering practices like TDD, pair programming, continuous deployment, and threat modeling (OWASP LLM).
• Governance, security & compliance: Experience delivering under complex regulatory environments (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, Saudi PDPL, or EU AI Act) and high-security standards.
• Regional & cross-cultural engagement: Experience delivering in GCC markets or international settings, with Arabic language proficiency or public advocacy (talks, open source, publications) being a strong plus.

Professional Skills

• Effective communication: Comfortable and clear when presenting to diverse groups, facilitating workshops, leading pitches, or writing documentation that remains impactful asynchronously.
• Product-minded approach: Fluent in outcome-driven delivery, continuous discovery, hypothesis testing, and focusing on minimum lovable products over output alone.
• Inclusive leadership and mentorship: Skilled at guiding, pairing with, and unblocking engineers, empowering team members from all backgrounds to grow and own their work.
• Adaptability in ambiguity: Composed when facing complex challenges, transitioning seamlessly between strategic advisor and hands-on collaborator as needs evolve.
• Collaborative feedback: Open to giving and receiving constructive feedback with empathy, continuously sharing knowledge across disciplines.

Why you might like it here

Your first year, roughly

Travel and location

• This is a KSA-anchored role. Expect regular time in Riyadh and other GCC client sites — roughly 40% regional travel — plus occasional global (~10%) for CXPD-wide gatherings, cross-region pursuits and knowledge sharing.

Learning & Development

Responsible Use of AI in Recruitment

About Thoughtworks