Forward Deployed AI Engineer (Multiple Levels)

Location: Remote within the United States, with approximately 30% travel to client locations. Preference is given to candidates in the Chicago or New York metropolitan areas for proximity to offices and in-person collaboration.

Base salary: $110,000–$240,000 per year, with possible sales-based or performance-based incentives.

Company

NIQ is a consumer intelligence company that uses retail data, advanced analytics, and AI to help brands and retailers make business decisions.

What you will do

• Partner with clients to identify complex business challenges and opportunities for measurable AI impact.
• Design, build, and deploy production-grade applications using AI, machine learning, APIs, cloud technologies, and modern software engineering practices.
• Develop solutions with large language models, retrieval systems, agents, workflow automation, and advanced analytics.
• Lead projects from discovery and prototyping through deployment, adoption, and ongoing optimization.
• Collaborate with client stakeholders, product leaders, engineers, and data scientists to deliver scalable solutions.
• Measure reliability, performance, and user adoption while creating reusable frameworks and influencing future AI product direction.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in software engineering, AI engineering, solutions engineering, deployment engineering, technical consulting, or a related field.
• Experience building and delivering production systems from requirements gathering through implementation and adoption.
• Production programming experience with Python, Java, Go, TypeScript, or similar languages, plus APIs, SQL, cloud platforms, data pipelines, and modern application architectures.
• Experience building or deploying AI, machine learning, generative AI, or LLM-based applications in production.
• Strong systems thinking, communication, customer collaboration, and ability to translate ambiguous problems into scalable technical solutions.
• Ability and willingness to travel approximately 30% to client locations.

Nice to have

• Experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Technical Consultant, Customer Engineer, or in a similar client-facing engineering role.
• Experience with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Experience in startup environments, enterprise technical engagements, retail, consumer packaged goods, analytics, or data-driven decision-making.

Culture & Benefits

• Founding-team environment with startup-level autonomy and ownership backed by the scale and resources of a global company.
• Flexible working environment.
• Comprehensive healthcare, dental, vision, life, disability, and AD&D insurance.
• 401(k) retirement plan with company matching, flexible spending accounts, and a Health Savings Account with company contributions.
• Paid time off, 11 paid holidays, volunteer time off, parental leave, tuition reimbursement, and LinkedIn Learning.