Principal 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.

📩 Interested, please apply below!