Senior Applied Engineer (AI)

Location: Washington D.C.; requires travel up to 50% and on-site work at government facilities.

Base salary: $180,000–$245,000 per year, excluding bonus, equity, and benefits.

Company

Deepgram provides real-time Voice AI APIs and self-hosted or on-premises speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice-agent solutions.

What you will do

• Own technical delivery for federal deployments from initial prototypes and proofs of concept through stable production systems.
• Embed with federal customers to design and build mission-critical applications powered by Voice AI.
• Lead technical discovery, solution design, demonstrations, proposals, and support for complex government procurement cycles.
• Build full-stack integrations and observable systems using Python, JavaScript, Rust, or comparable technologies.
• Guide deployment strategy, performance optimization, troubleshooting, and relationships with federal technical and executive stakeholders.
• Create reusable tools, playbooks, reference architectures, and product feedback for Applied Engineering, Product, and Engineering teams.

Requirements

• Active Top Secret clearance or equivalent.
• At least 5 years of engineering or technical deployment experience, preferably in customer-facing or government environments.
• Professional software development experience with Python, JavaScript, or a comparable modern programming language.
• Experience building and deploying production systems in government or similarly constrained environments.
• Ability to scope and deliver complex systems in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Willingness to travel up to 50%, including on-site work at government facilities.

Nice to have

• Experience with speech recognition, NLP, AI or voice agents.
• Familiarity with AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, Kubernetes, Terraform, and related infrastructure.
• Experience deploying LLM or generative-model systems and understanding their impact on product experience.
• Knowledge of FedRAMP, FISMA, or other government compliance frameworks.
• Experience with API-first products, developer tools, government sales methodologies, automation, and customer enablement documentation.

Culture & Benefits

• AI-first working environment with active use and experimentation with advanced AI tools.
• High-autonomy work in ambiguous, mission-driven customer environments.
• Direct contribution to production systems and reusable engineering practices.
• Opportunities to influence Voice AI model and product development through field feedback.
• Compensation includes base salary, equity, and bonus.

Hiring process

• First 30 days: onboarding, product and API training, and shadowing commercial and federal customer engagements.
• By 60 days: begin leading federal discovery and proofs of concept and contribute to federal technical materials.
• By 90 days: own assigned federal technical relationships and deliver complex mission-focused solutions.