Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Public Sector

About this role

At Scale, we build the AI systems behind some of the country's most important decisions. On the Public Sector Engineering team, you'll embed directly with U.S. government customers, including the Army, Air Force, Joint commands and Intelligence Community, to build and deploy AI applications that support their most critical missions.

This is a hybrid customer-facing engineering role. You'll sit with the people whose problems you're solving, own delivery from first prototype to production, and ship software that customers adopt and rely on in the field. Model performance matters, timelines are urgent, and ambiguity is the norm. Your work directly shapes what Scale's platform can do for the public sector.

What you'll do

• Embed with government customers to understand their mission, scope the problem, and turn it into working software.

• Own delivery end-to-end: design, build, deploy, and maintain solutions at customer sites, from prototype to stable production.

• Build robust backend systems and data integrations that connect customer environments to Scale's platform and back.

• Partner with product and engineering to feed field signals back into the roadmap, so the patterns you build once become capabilities the whole team can reuse.

• Serve as the technical point of contact for customer stakeholders, guiding adoption and maximizing mission impact.

What we're looking for

Required

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, ideally in customer-facing, forward-deployed, or government contexts.

• Strong production coding in Python and TypeScript (or comparable modern languages).

• Comfort across the stack, including cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), containers, Linux, and networking fundamentals.

• Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and make sound trade-offs under pressure.

• An active TS/SCI clearance, or eligibility to obtain one.

Bonus

• Experience building or deploying systems powered by LLMs or generative models.

• Familiarity with Node and React, Kubernetes and Docker, and Terraform.

• Data engineering background covering ETL pipelines, data modeling, and data governance.

Location and travel

This role requires significant time on-site with customers. Expect 25% travel with up to 50% travel as necessary, and/or relocation to Washington DC or St. Louis. Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is: $184,000 — $292,560 USD

The base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of Hawaii, Washington DC, Texas, Colorado is: $165,600 — $263,304 USD

The base salary range for this full-time position in the location of St. Louis is: $138,000 — $219,420 USD

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

The base salary range for this full-time position in the location of Honolulu, Hawaii is: $138,000 — $219,420 USD

PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

About Us:

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst & Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclus

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