AI Field Engineer - Enterprise

Fireworks AI

AI Field Engineer - Enterprise

Full-time

Remote

San Mateo, CA$176K - $224K (OTE: $220K - $280K)

Benefits

Performance-based variable compensation (20% of OTE, paid quarterly)

Meaningful equity in a fast-growing Series C startup ($4B valuation)

Comprehensive benefits package

Remote-friendly work environment (US-based)

Visa sponsorship (H-1B transfer, TN; O-1 case-by-case)

Sample profiles

About this role

We are looking for an AI Field Engineer (Enterprise) with 3+ years of experience to embed with Fireworks AI's most ambitious enterprise customers and turn complex GenAI challenges into production systems - fast. You'll be the technical tip of the spear, pairing deep hands-on engineering with the executive presence to earn trust across large organizations and drive deals from first discovery call to production deployment.

What will you be doing?

• Lead technical discovery calls, scope POCs, and run load tests and evaluations to validate the right model architecture and deployment configuration for each enterprise customer
• Build end-to-end POCs and production integrations hands-on-keyboard inside customer environments, navigating their infrastructure, security requirements, and organizational constraints
• Guide customers on model selection, fine-tuning strategy (SFT, DPO, RFT), and evaluation frameworks - moving them from open-model exploration to production at scale
• Manage multi-stakeholder enterprise relationships - identifying technical champions, navigating org politics, and aligning the right people to move deals forward quickly
• Feed recurring customer pain points and deployment patterns back into the product roadmap, acting as a direct feedback loop between the field and engineering

Key Requirements

• Deep hands-on experience with LLM inference and/or training - working knowledge of open-model frameworks (vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM) and fine-tuning workflows (SFT at minimum; DPO/RFT a strong plus); candidates with only closed-model/API-wrapper experience will not clear the bar
• Proven ability to ship production code inside a customer's environment - not just advisory work; you've built and deployed POCs/MVPs that ran in someone else's prod system
• Strong Python skills plus GPU/cloud infrastructure experience (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and comfort with Kubernetes
• Executive presence and enterprise navigation skills - able to run a technical deep-dive with an ML engineer and present architecture trade-offs to a VP in the same afternoon
• Pre-sales or customer-facing field engineering experience (FDE, Applied AI Engineer, Solutions Architect, or similar); pure software engineers without customer-facing exposure are not a fit

Seniority

3+ years of experience in client- facing AI/ML roles - solutions architects, forward- deployed engineers, customer success engineers, Applied AI Engineers, Sales Engineers, AI Infra/ML Engineers, and Software Engineers with client- facing exposure

Work experience

Shipped AI/ML production code in a customer's environment, with hands- on LLM inference and fine- tuning experience

Owned the pre- sales field cycle end- to- end: discovery, POC scoping, evals, and model selection

Experience at a AI- native/AI- infra startup or enterprise SaaS building AI features

Hard skills

LLM serving frameworks (vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT- LLM) - inference trade- offs, terminal- comfortable

GenAI infrastructure management - deploying and operating open- model inference

Hyperscaler experience in an AI capacity

Soft skills

Demonstrated executive presence in enterprise customer- facing roles

Navigated enterprise org politics end- to- end

Miscellaneous

Domestic travel to enterprise customers as needed

Traits to avoid

Closed- model API wrappers only - no open- model inference, serving frameworks, or fine- tuning exposure

Hardware/chip company background (e. g. , Intel, AMD) with no AI feature- building experience

Traditional enterprise, banking, insurance, or manufacturing background with no AI/ML product work

Advisory/consulting background with no shipped production code

Big Tech- only background - no startup or field engineering exposure

Short stints (~1yr or less) across recent roles with no clear progression

What to ask candidates

• What specifically about our company and this Solutions Architect role is exciting to you? (Probe: Did they do research? Is it the AI space, the stage, the technical challenge?)
• How do you partner with a sales representative to strategize for a large deal? Can you give an example of how you influenced the sales strategy? (Goes beyond partnership to influence).
• Are you able to work in San Mateo, CA or New York, NY and come into the office?
• Walk me through a time you built and shipped a POC or production integration directly inside a customer's environment - what was the stack and what did you own end-to-end?
• What's your hands-on experience with LLM inference frameworks like vLLM or SGLang and fine-tuning workflows like SFT or DPO?
• What is their salary expectation?
• How actively is this candidate exploring new opportunities?

Non-ideal companies

Here are a list of companies Fireworks AI would like you to avoid sourcing candidates from.

Traditional enterprise SaaS companies where AI is a bolt-on feature layer rather than the core product (candidates lack AI-native depth and open-model experience per hiring manager guidance)

Salesforce

ServiceNow

Workday Peakon Employee Voice

SAP

Oracle

HubSpot

Zendesk

Avoid Companies

Citi

Deloitte

PwC

Fireworks AI

Run AI faster, more efficiently, and on your own terms

About us

Fireworks is the fastest way to build, tune, and scale AI on open models. Ship production-ready AI in seconds on our globally distributed cloud infrastructure, optimized for your use case. Fireworks powers production workloads at companies like Uber, Doordash, Notion, and Cursor-delivering 15 faster speed, 4 lower latency, and 4 more concurrency than closed models.

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Team size

Industry

AI, Software Development, Enterprise, B2B

Founded

2021

Website

Total funding

$1.5B

Office locations

San Mateo, CA +1

Company locations

San Mateo, CA +2