Principal Forward Deployed AI Engineer

About the role

EPAM is looking for a Principal Forward Deployed AI Engineer to own end‑to‑end AI delivery across multiple streams. You will lead mini‑teams, collaborate with business stakeholders, solution architects, data engineers and analysts, and design production‑grade agentic AI systems.

Key responsibilities

• Own end‑to‑end AI delivery across two streams and lead a mini‑team per stream (Senior AI Engineer, AI Engineer, DQ Engineer, Analyst).
• Embed with business stakeholders, solution architects, data engineers and analysts to refine requirements and user journeys.
• Design the agent architecture/harness, including connections to data sources and RAG pipelines.
• Create SME/end‑user feedback loops for continuous agent improvement.
• Build evaluation pipelines and establish the agent‑evaluation process, including LLM‑as‑judge methodologies.
• Implement observability and telemetry layers (tracing, quality metrics, BigQuery telemetry).
• Determine optimal user journey design between chat and A2UI interactions.
• Influence ETL, transformation and vectorization decisions with data engineering teams.

Required profile

• 7+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering with a proven track record of leading teams and delivering production AI systems.
• Expertise in agent architecture design, orchestration frameworks, and Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines.
• Proficiency with Vertex AI Search, BigQuery and NL2SQL.
• Experience integrating external APIs and data sources into agentic systems.
• Background in designing evaluation pipelines, including LLM‑as‑judge and golden‑set curation.
• Knowledge of observability, telemetry, tracing and quality‑metric systems.
• Understanding of ETL, data transformation and vectorization processes.
• Familiarity with chat and A2UI interaction paradigms.

Required skills

• Vertex AI Search
• BigQuery
• NL2SQL
• RAG pipelines
• Agent orchestration frameworks
• External API integration
• LLM evaluation pipelines
• Observability & telemetry (tracing, quality metrics)
• ETL, data transformation, vectorization

What we offer

• Innovative projects for global industry leaders
• Flexible work environment – office or home
• Opportunities to work abroad up to two months per year
• Relocation options across 55+ countries
• Leadership development, certifications (GCP, Azure, AWS) and internal learning resources
• Medical & family care package, referral bonuses, six trust days per year
• Coverage for psychology sessions, fitness club discounts and other wellbeing benefits