Spe
Principal Forward Deployed Engineer
Culver City, California · Principal
Sponsorship not specified$195k-$245kDetected 17 days ago
Backend DevelopmentFull-Stack DevelopmentGitAWSGCPAzureCloud PlatformsDevOpsMachine LearningData EngineeringLLMsRAGLLMOpsMLOpsA/B TestingMentoring
About the role
- This Principal Forward Deployed Engineer role is a newly created role, and this person will help define its future from day one.
- This person will be deeply embedded with teams across Sony Pictures and help pioneer the AI-DLC that will underpin our next generation of solutions.
- Reusable patterns from every engagement flow back into the EIP platform so successive projects compound.
Responsibilities
- Lead AI-DLC adoption in your partner teams: coach the team into team-tier self-sufficiency on AI-assisted development so they continue using the practice after you roll off. (10%)
- When the application requires inference at runtime, build production LLM components on the EIP platform (RAG, agentic orchestration, prompt architecture, evaluation frameworks, observability, and guardrails). (10%)
- Harvest reusable patterns from every engagement back into the EIP platform backlog so what you build becomes platform capability and successive engagements compound. (20%)
- Hold the line with senior stakeholders when the request needs to change, and own what you ship through the handoff to the incumbent application team.
- This Principal Forward Deployed Engineer is a full-stack senior engineer who partners with other parts of IT and with SPE business teams to ship full applications end to end.
- The role uses the AI Development Life Cycle (AI-DLC), which is AI-assisted development tooling and practice, to compress the build cycle dramatically.
- EIP partners with IT and with business groups to deliver production AI applications and to compress the build cycle through AI-DLC practice.
Requirements
- Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tooling (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, or equivalent) to ship production code at meaningfully faster cycle times than traditional development.
- Comfort generating, reviewing, and iterating on AI-generated code at velocity, with the judgment to know what to keep and what to throw away.
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
- Some production experience with LLM-based systems (RAG, agents, prompt architecture, evaluation frameworks), applicable to the subset of engagements where the application includes runtime AI.
- A track record of satisfying enterprise security, governance, and data-handling requirements when shipping software in regulated or rights-sensitive domains.
- Comfort operating with high autonomy in ambiguous, fast-moving engagements.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
- Full-stack production engineering experience across the whole application stack: object-oriented development proficiency, backend services, data pipelines, user-facing application surfaces (web UIs, internal tools, integrations), cloud (AWS and / or Azure), containers, and infrastructure-as-code. You ship every layer, not just the AI components.
- Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tooling (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, or equivalent) to ship production code at meaningfully faster cycle times than traditional development. Comfort generating, reviewing, and iterating on AI-generated code at velocity, with the judgment to know what to keep and what to throw away.
- Strong stakeholder communication. You can sit with a non-technical business partner, draw out what they actually need beyond the surface ask, propose a solution with them, and own translating it into a decomposed, shippable plan in real time. The same skill carries from frontline operators through senior executives.
- Comfort operating with high autonomy in ambiguous, fast-moving engagements. You write, ship, and own production code
- you do not hand off recommendations.
Nice to have
- Prior Forward Deployed Engineer or embedded senior engineer experience.
- Deep experience with AI-assisted development workflows in a production setting (not just experimentation).
- Experience coaching teams through methodology shifts (DevOps adoption, agile transformations, AI-assisted development rollouts).
- Prior experience in media, entertainment, or other rights-sensitive industries.
- Experience with the EIP foundation platforms (Amazon Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenAI APIs) or with Moveworks / Agentic Foundation.
- Cloud platform certifications (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and / or production-AI / MLOps certifications.
- Sony Pictures Entertainment is an equal opportunity employer.
- SPE will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with applicable law.
Compensation
- The anticipated base salary for this position is $195,000-$245,000.
Company info
- The Enterprise Intelligence Platform (EIP) builds and operates the AI platform that powers Sony Pictures Entertainment and drives AI Development Life Cycle (AI-DLC) adoption across the studio; it allows application teams to ship faster by using AI in the build process.
- The Forward Deployed Engineer sits inside EIP and is how both the platform and the practice reach the work.
- Production-LLM capability is part of the kit, but the dominant value of the role is shipping the application faster than traditional development cycles allow.
- This is a write, ship, and own role: production code, AI-DLC practice, and platform feedback.
This listing is sourced directly from Spe's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.