Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Business Area: Corp. Strategy Seniority Level: Director Job Description:   At Cloudera, we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, we're the preferred data partner for the top companies in almost every industry.  Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world’s largest enterprises.

About Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) at Cloudera Cloudera’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) function sits within the Applied AI org, and is a specialized AI engineering team focused on accelerating AI adoption within our most strategic enterprise customers. We embed directly with customers to rapidly pilot AI use cases, solve real-world business challenges, and help operationalize advanced AI capabilities within enterprise environments. Cloudera FDEs operate at the intersection of customer engineering, AI innovation, and enterprise deployment - driving high-impact AI outcomes for customers and codifying solution patterns for repeatable delivery at scale.

This role is not eligible for immigration sponsorship or relocation.

About the role Cloudera is looking for a seasoned hands-on AI engineer who can embed with customers, shape technical direction, and ship elegant, scalable, enterprise-quality AI applications. As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer you will: Build & Prototype AI Apps - Develop full-stack AI applications on Cloudera to demonstrate how AI and agentic systems solve real enterprise use cases

Partner with Strategic Customers - Work directly with customer teams to drive AI and agentic use cases from early prototype toward production readiness

Shape Enterprise AI Strategy - Advise customer leaders on AI roadmaps, use case prioritization, deployment considerations, and align AI initiatives with business goals

Codify Solution Patterns - Standardize successful patterns into repeatable reference architectures, productized solutions, starter kits, and internal playbooks 

Multiply impact - Mentor Cloudera teams, and contribute to resources that grow our AI capability. Channel field and customer signal back to Product teams to improve our AI platform and products

We are excited if you have: 5+ years of experience building and deploying production-grade systems, including 2-3 years experience building Generative AI or agentic applications

Strong hands-on software engineering, data engineering, and applied AI/ML skills, with experience building full-stack AI applications or agentic systems using modern AI frameworks and tooling

Experience with foundation models, context engineering, fine-tuning, semantic search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic workflows

Deep understanding of LLMOps/MLOps practices including evaluation, observability, serving, monitoring, and lifecycle management

Experience designing and implementing scalable AI solution architectures aligned to enterprise standards (security, governance, compliance, etc.)

The ability to engage directly with customers, both technical and executive audiences - to translate needs into actionable technical strategy

High agency with the ability to operate autonomously and thrive in ambiguous, fast-moving customer environments

A collaborative mindset and passion for enabling others through mentorship, internal enablement, or reusable tooling

You may also have: Experience with cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Experience using the Cloudera platform 

Experience with open source big data technologies like Spark, Iceberg, NiFi, etc

Experience with AI infrastructure and runtime technologies including NVIDIA GPUs, inference optimization, model serving, or distributed AI workloads

  The expected base salary range for this role in:

New York City is $270-320k

Please note that the compensation details listed in our job  postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include commissions or bonus as applicable

The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location  

What you can expect from us: Generous PTO Policy 

Support work life balance with Unplugged Days

Flexible WFH Policy 

Mental & Physical Wellness programs 

Phone and Internet Reimbursement program 

Access to Continued Career Development 

Comprehensive Benefits and Competitive Packages 

Paid Volunteer Time

Employee Resource Groups

EEO/VEVRAA

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