Forward Deployed Engineer

Principal Forward Deployed Engineer | Sovereign AI | Outside IR35 | £650–850 per day

I’m working on an exciting contract opportunity for a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to join a growing team delivering cutting-edge AI solutions across defence and national security.

This is a hands-on, technically demanding role for someone who enjoys taking products from 0 to 1, solving complex infrastructure challenges and getting software deployed into highly secure, restricted and air-gapped environments.

£650–850 per day
3–6 month contract
Outside IR35
London | 1–2 days per week on-site
Active DV clearance essential

What you’ll be doing:

• Leading technical engagements with senior defence, engineering and security stakeholders.




• Owning deployments end to end, from requirements gathering through to integration, testing, accreditation and handover.




• Adapting cloud-native applications to Kubernetes, OpenShift, on-premise, private cloud and air-gapped environments.




• Working across GCP, Terraform, Docker and CI/CD pipelines.




• Remaining hands-on with full-stack development, APIs, infrastructure and production troubleshooting.




• Taking ownership of technical documentation, testing strategies and security assurance.

What I’m looking for:

• A Principal Engineer or former technical founder with strong 0-to-1 product experience.




• Extensive hands-on experience with GCP and infrastructure/DevOps.




• Strong full-stack engineering skills across TypeScript, Node.js, React and PostgreSQL.




• Experience deploying and integrating complex software across varied infrastructure environments.




• A strong understanding of security engineering, testing and technical assurance.




• Active DV clearance is essential.

Experience delivering into MOD, defence or other highly restricted environments would be a huge plus. Production AI/LLM experience is also desirable.

This is a great opportunity for an engineer who wants genuine technical ownership and the chance to tackle some of the most challenging problems in sovereign AI.