Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Role Description

A Forward Deployed Engineer at Praxent embeds with a client, figures out what they actually need, and builds it. Not a spec handed down from a product manager — you are in the discovery conversation, you decide what gets built, and you ship it to production and stay until it works.

• Own technical delivery end to end on your accounts — discovery, architecture, build, production, and the messy weeks after launch.
• Embed with client engineering and business teams. Translate a VP's business problem into an architecture, and that architecture back into language the VP can defend to their board.
• Build production applications and agentic systems inside client environments: LLM-backed workflows, agent orchestration, evaluation frameworks, and integrations against core banking, lending, policy administration, and financial data systems.
• Design the integration surface. Most of this work is API design and systems integration against platforms that were not built to be integrated with.
• Harden prototypes into systems a regulated institution will actually run — security review, audit trail, PII handling, performance under real load.
• Scope down. Identify when a client is asking for the wrong thing and talk them into the right thing.
• Guide the client's own engineers. Part of leaving well is that their team can extend what you built without calling us.
• Own the hardest production problems on your accounts — the ones that surface at 4pm on a Friday in someone else's infrastructure.
• Own the implementation plan and direct the work. You decide the sequence, and as an engagement scales you delegate to the engineers around you.
• Make the case for growth by building things worth expanding.
• Flag risk before it becomes a problem.
• Leave behind documented, runnable, maintainable software that still works after you rotate off.

Qualifications

• 6+ years shipping production software, full-stack.
• Python is what most of this work is written in; .NET or Node are fine substitutes. React or Next.js on the front end.
• Experience leading the technical side of a delivery.
• Real client-facing delivery experience.
• Production experience with LLMs and agents.
• Comfort with ambiguity.
• Range in the room.
• A story about scoping down.
• Willingness to travel to client sites 20–30% of the time.

Requirements

• You have owned an implementation plan, sequenced the work, and directed other engineers without being their manager.
• API design and systems integration.
• You have integrated against something old, poorly documented, and load-bearing, and made it hold.
• You have run a discovery session, handled a difficult stakeholder, and delivered an account without someone above you managing the relationship.
• Prompt engineering, agent development, evaluation frameworks, deployment at scale. Application engineering, not ML research.

Benefits

• Stability. We've been in business for over 25 years.
• Work stays at work. We promote a healthy work/life balance to help ensure you have the time that you need. We encourage no more than a 40 hour work week.
• Great company culture. We’ve been recognized by Texas Monthly, Clutch, Comparably, and more for the quality of our workplace.
• We’re here to empower you. It’s your work and your career. Our management team is here to help you become who you want to be.
• Stay healthy. We offer medical, dental, and vision coverage as well as wellness days. We also provide disability insurance and we even have a wellness program.
• Plan for the future. Save for retirement with an IRA and we’ll match up to 3% every year.
• We value your ideas. At Praxent, our doors are always open.
• Rest and relaxation. Employees enjoy 15 days of PTO, 9 US holidays, 5 sick days, and a closed office the last week of the year.
• You’re more than an employee, you’re a person. Every co-worker you’ll meet is committed to treating you with respect and kindness.
• Family values. Praxent provides paid parental leave.

Company Description

Praxent builds software for financial services companies — banks, credit unions, lenders, insurers, and wealth platforms. We have been doing it for over twenty years, from Austin, with a delivery team spread across the US and Latin America.

We are an Anthropic partner, and building agentic AI systems inside our clients' environments is now a core part of the work rather than an experiment on the side.