Forward Deployed AI Engineer

The Role of Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Crayon Data is seeking a Forward Deployed AI Engineer to work in Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This full-time role involves deploying, integrating, optimizing, and operationalizing enterprise Generative AI platforms within secure, on-premise, and air-gapped banking environments. The engineer will collaborate with client IT, infrastructure, security, engineering, and AI teams to ensure successful, production-ready AI platform deployments.

Key Responsibilities

• Deploy and configure NVIDIA NIMs, LLMs, DataRobot, Graph Databases, and other AI platforms.
• Install and manage AI workloads on Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes environments.
• Package and deploy container images, dependencies, and LLM model weights in air-gapped environments.
• Configure and optimize NVIDIA GPU Operator, GPU time-slicing, and MIG for AI workloads.
• Optimize LLM inference performance, including TTFT, throughput, latency, and GPU utilization.
• Build and manage CI/CD and GitOps pipelines using tools such as ArgoCD and OpenShift Pipelines.
• Develop and maintain Helm charts, Kustomize manifests, and Kubernetes configurations.
• Troubleshoot deployment, infrastructure, networking, and performance issues in secure client environments.
• Work directly with client IT, Security, and Infrastructure teams to resolve technical blockers and ensure successful deployments.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Experience: 5-10 years of overall experience, with 4+ years in Software Engineering, DevOps, Platform Engineering, or a related field, and 2+ years of hands-on experience in MLOps / LLMOps.
• Platform Expertise: Strong experience with Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes.
• AI Technologies: Hands-on experience with NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA GPU Operator; experience deploying LLMs, NVIDIA NIM, Triton, or enterprise AI platforms.
• Containerization: Strong understanding of containerization, Docker/OCI images, and Kubernetes workloads.
• DevOps Tools: Experience with Helm, Kustomize, Kubernetes Operators, GitOps, ArgoCD, OpenShift Pipelines, or similar CI/CD tools.
• Security: Understanding of air-gapped / disconnected environments and offline software deployment; good understanding of enterprise authentication and security frameworks such as Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, and OAuth; experience with secure secrets management using HashiCorp Vault, OpenShift Secrets, or similar technologies.
• Soft Skills: Strong troubleshooting, communication, and client-facing skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience deploying AI platforms in Banking / BFSI or highly regulated environments.
• Experience working in air-gapped or disconnected data centers.
• CKA / CKAD certification.
• Experience with NVIDIA NIM, Triton Inference Server, or DataRobot.
• Experience with Graph Databases such as Neo4j or ArangoDB.
• Experience with GPU performance tuning, MIG, and GPU time-slicing.
• Experience with large-scale LLM inference and RAG deployments.

Application Information

This is a full-time position located in Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Salary information will be disclosed during the hiring process.