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.

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