Summary
XD.AI is hiring a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer in Abu Dhabi for a fully on-site role. The engineer will work with business units to define requirements and baseline metrics, then design and deliver production-ready agentic AI systems. Responsibilities include guiding deployments through compliance reviews, driving adoption, measuring realized value, and improving reusable platform capabilities. Applicants should have strong hands-on production engineering experience, expertise in LLMs and agentic systems, and the ability to work independently with business and technical stakeholders.
The posting
As published on xdigit.ai. Pulled from the employer's site and shown as they wrote it.
Role Overview
As a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer — Domain Rewiring, you will join a select squad of senior peers at Office, working in a fully ONSITE environment. This is a high-impact, individual contributor position where you directly own and deliver the most challenging system "rewiring" projects end-to-end. You'll be embedded within business entities, defining requirements, designing agentic workflows, ensuring real measured value, and serving as product owner for your projects—without a product manager, business analyst, or architect setting your path.
Responsibilities
- Embed deeply in business units to understand real workflows, write requirements, and capture key baseline metrics needed for success measurement.
- Architect and deliver production-ready agentic software systems: design agent workflows, retrieval and orchestration logic, compose tools, agents, and evaluation processes, and write scalable production code.
- Spearhead deployment through each compliance and approval stage: autonomy tiering, policy as code, tenant isolation, PDPL and InfoSec review—turning each deployment into a repeatable blueprint for future success.
- Own adoption, driving both the technical and human process changes necessary to realize real, measurable value within the entity.
- Measure, prove, and report value achieved versus the agreed baseline, and recommend scale-up, redesign, or decommissioning based on objective evidence.
- Continuously improve squad playbooks and reusable platform elements to accelerate future rewirings; mentor and grow new FDEs as the portfolio scales.
- As needed, lead a rewiring pod or take responsibility for a domain portfolio slice—always alongside your own direct field delivery.
- Within the first three months: personally execute an end-to-end domain rewiring in a flagship entity, produce a signed-off value case with measured reporting, and establish reusable sovereign platform capabilities.
Must have requirements
- Exceptional record of hands-on production engineering: proven delivery of systems used daily by real users, with outcomes and metrics to show.
- Expertise in ambiguous, customer-facing, and embedded roles—defining problems, requirements, and success independently.
- Deep proficiency in large language models, agentic AI systems, agent workflow design, orchestration, retrieval, prompt engineering, and related coding skills (e.g., Python, relevant frameworks).
- Instinctive product ownership: experienced in user interviews, requirement gathering, scope definition, and business-oriented decision-making—without PM support.
- Confident in discussing ROI, cost, headcount, and operational metrics with senior leadership.
- Skilled in navigating enterprise or government IT constraints: identity, networking, data governance, releasing, and compliance processes.
- A track record of disciplined, evidence-based decisions to scale, stop, or rework products based on realized—not projected—value.
- Prepared to provide evidence of at least two products personally built to production (with outcomes and numbers), and an instance where you stopped/descoped a project due to insufficient value.
Nice to have requirements
- Experience in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or delivery leadership, preferably in building and growing technical teams.
- Prior delivery experience in government or regulated, high-assurance sectors.
- Background as a founder, founding engineer, or key contributor in zero-to-one product development within large organizations.
- Hands-on Azure and platform engineering skills.
- Fluency in Arabic and English, or proven experience working in a bilingual (Arabic/English) environment.
Perks and Benefits
- Direct ownership of high-impact, transformative engineering challenges and their realized value.
- Opportunity to shape embedded field delivery for critical systems at true production scale.
- Work alongside a squad of principal-level peers in a transparent, measured, and empowered environment.
- Room to influence squad playbooks, hiring, and the platform's future capabilities.
- Access to latest AI technologies, sovereign AI platform design, and agentic workflows at scale.
- Recognition based on field outcomes: value delivered, time to delivery, and enduring impact, not lines of code or team size.