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RNB Consultancy

AI Forward Deployed Engineer – Government Fraud Detection

$150K - $250K Washington, DC, US Mid Posted October 05, 2026

Role Description

Use agentic AI to uncover fraud in government spending, and watch your work become real cases.

An AI company is taking on fraud, waste and abuse in public spending in the US. Their agent platform combines public and restricted government data, such as federal spending and contract records and healthcare claims, connects the dots and produces concrete fraud cases with the evidence trail auditors need. The founders have already exposed substantial fraud that nobody had spotted, across multiple agencies, and are talking with federal health, defense and homeland security agencies as well as state governments. Multi-million-dollar contracts are within reach; engineering capacity is the only thing holding them back.

They're hiring 7 forward deployed engineers, their first cohort.

What you'll own

As a Member of Technical Staff, you'll mix applied AI research with production engineering, working embedded with government customers:

  • Agent systems for critical government work, from first prototype all the way to production
  • LLM applications using RAG, tool-calling and multi-agent setups, with humans in the loop where it matters
  • Pipelines to curate data and evaluate models as they're trained and improved
  • The infra behind inference, experiments, evals and deployment

Two teams

  • Defense and homeland security: on site with defense customers two to three times a week. A top-secret clearance is required and sponsored, so candidates must be eligible for one.
  • Federal health and state and local government: no clearance needed.

What you bring

  • 1–4 years of production engineering where you owned what went live
  • Strong Python, and plenty of hands-on work with LLMs and agents: RAG, tool calling, multi-agent setups, context handling
  • Solid fundamentals rather than vibe coding, with experience in data pipelines and ML infra
  • A great communicator who can represent the company in front of government customers
  • The mindset of a founder or founding engineer; a team player without ego
  • Based in DC or able to move quickly; in the office five days a week

Bonus points

  • Founder or founding engineer at a company that grew or was acquired
  • Forward deployed or federal work at defense-tech or AI companies
  • Applied engineering at a leading AI company
  • A current security clearance
  • Experience with healthcare fraud

What's in it for you

  • $150k–$250k base + 0.5–1% equity
  • Mission-driven work: real fraud cases, backed by evidence auditors can act on
  • A founding cohort at a company where engineering is the only bottleneck

Good to know

  • Full-time, in office in Washington, DC, five days a week

Process: intro technical deep-dive in-person round* offer

Does this sound like you? Apply now. If you're a match, we'll be in touch within 3 working days.

RnB Consultancy | Netherlands | 3604 AB Maarssen | KvK 71489703

About Forward Deployed Engineering

Forward Deployed Engineers are embedded directly with customers to build custom solutions, integrate products into existing infrastructure, and bridge the gap between product engineering and customer success. The role combines deep technical skills with the ability to operate in client environments and translate business requirements into working software.

Originally pioneered by Palantir, the FDE model has spread across AI, enterprise SaaS, and cloud infrastructure companies. FDEs write production code, architect integrations, train customer teams, and feed product insights back to the core engineering organization. At companies like OpenAI, Salesforce, and Databricks, FDE teams are treated as elite engineering units that can ship custom solutions in days rather than quarters.

Typical FDE stack: Python, TypeScript, SQL, REST/GraphQL APIs, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and increasingly LLM APIs and AI orchestration frameworks. Strong communication and the ability to context-switch between technical and business conversations are as important as coding ability.

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