As a Forward Deployed Engineer at Sarvam, you will work directly with enterprise clients to integrate the company's platform into their business workflows. This hands-on, client-facing engineering role requires you to develop deep expertise in the platform, configure it for client needs, debug issues, and ensure high-quality outcomes.
Sarvam is building India's full-stack sovereign AI platform, focusing on research, models, infrastructure, and applications. The company partners with leading enterprises and public institutions and is backed by prominent investors. Sarvam aims to make AI genuinely work for India, with a focus on population-scale impact.
Why required: To understand how LLMs and agents work in production, including context engineering, memory, RAG, tool use, structured outputs, and failure modes.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will assess your understanding of AI concepts and their application in production environments.
Why required: To write code for integration scripts, platform configuration, and bug fixes, as well as to work with various tools and frameworks.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will evaluate your proficiency in Python and your ability to apply it in different contexts.
Why required: To work with backend services, databases, queues, and messaging systems, and to make design decisions that hold up at production load.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will assess your understanding of backend systems and your ability to design and implement scalable solutions.
Why required: To work with data pipelines, including data ingestion, processing, and storage, and to ensure data quality and integrity.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will evaluate your understanding of data pipelines and your ability to design and implement efficient data processing systems.
Why required: To work with cloud infrastructure, including AWS, GCP, or equivalent, and to ensure scalability, reliability, and security.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will assess your understanding of cloud infrastructure and your ability to design and implement scalable solutions.
Why required: To work with Kafka, including data ingestion, processing, and storage, and to ensure data quality and integrity.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will evaluate your understanding of Kafka and your ability to design and implement efficient data processing systems.
Why required: To work with SQS, including message queues, and to ensure reliable and scalable message processing.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will assess your understanding of SQS and your ability to design and implement efficient message processing systems.
Why required: To work with agentic frameworks, including LangGraph, LlamaIndex, Google ADK, or equivalent, and to ensure efficient and scalable AI processing.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will evaluate your understanding of agentic frameworks and your ability to design and implement efficient AI processing systems.
Why required: To work with LLMs, including understanding how they work in production, and to ensure efficient and scalable AI processing.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will assess your understanding of LLMs and your ability to design and implement efficient AI processing systems.
Why required: To work with agents, including understanding how they work in production, and to ensure efficient and scalable AI processing.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will evaluate your understanding of agents and your ability to design and implement efficient AI processing systems.
Why required: To work with various tools and frameworks, including those for data processing, machine learning, and AI.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will assess your proficiency in using various tools and frameworks and your ability to apply them in different contexts.
Why required: To work with structured outputs, including data formatting and processing, and to ensure data quality and integrity.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will evaluate your understanding of structured outputs and your ability to design and implement efficient data processing systems.
Why required: To understand failure modes, including error handling and debugging, and to ensure reliable and scalable systems.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will assess your understanding of failure modes and your ability to design and implement reliable systems.
Why required: To work with open and closed source models, including understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and to ensure efficient and scalable AI processing.
How recruiters evaluate: The recruiter will evaluate your understanding of open and closed source models and your ability to design and implement efficient AI processing systems.
Freshers with a strong foundation in AI fundamentals, Python, and backend development can apply. However, the role requires a high level of technical expertise, so freshers with relevant experience or projects may be preferred.
Experienced professionals with a strong background in AI, backend development, and cloud infrastructure can apply. The role requires a high level of technical expertise, so experienced professionals with relevant experience or projects may be preferred.
Graduates with a degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent can apply. However, the role requires a high level of technical expertise, so graduates with relevant experience or projects may be preferred.
B.Tech graduates with a degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent can apply. However, the role requires a high level of technical expertise, so B.Tech graduates with relevant experience or projects may be preferred.
MCA graduates with a degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent can apply. However, the role requires a high level of technical expertise, so MCA graduates with relevant experience or projects may be preferred.
Diploma holders with a degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent can apply. However, the role requires a high level of technical expertise, so diploma holders with relevant experience or projects may be preferred.
The salary range for this role in the industry is ₹15 lakhs to ₹30 lakhs per annum.
The salary range for freshers in this role is ₹10 lakhs to ₹20 lakhs per annum.
The salary range for experienced professionals in this role is ₹25 lakhs to ₹50 lakhs per annum.
The salary growth for this role is expected to be high, with opportunities for growth and advancement in the company.
The next step in the career path for a Forward Deployed Engineer is a Software Engineer role, where you will work on designing and implementing software systems.
The next step in the career path for a Software Engineer is a Technical Lead role, where you will lead a team of engineers and be responsible for technical direction.
The next step in the career path for a Technical Lead is an Architect role, where you will be responsible for designing and implementing system architecture.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to AI and its applications.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to backend development with Python.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to cloud computing with AWS.
To be successful in this role, you need to have a strong foundation in AI, backend development, and cloud infrastructure. You should also have experience with data pipelines, messaging systems, and agentic frameworks. Staying current with new technologies and tools is also important.
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Forward Deployed Engineer
Location
Bengaluru
Employment Type
Full time
Location Type
On-site
Department
Engineering
Overview
Application
About Sarvam
Sarvam is building the bedrock of Sovereign AI for India. The company is developing India’s full-stack sovereign AI platform, building across research, models, infrastructure and applications with a singular focus on making AI genuinely work for India. Sarvam works with leading enterprises and public institutions and is backed by Lightspeed, Peak XV, and Khosla Ventures. Sarvam partners with India’s leading brands, including Tata Capital, SBI Life, CRED, IDFC, and LIC.
About the Role
We’re looking for an FDE to work directly with enterprise clients integrating our platform into their business workflows. You will be embedded with clients - understanding their operational processes, configuring the platform for their needs, debugging issues end-to-end, and ensuring they achieve high-quality outcomes across their use cases.
This is a hands-on, client-facing engineering role. You’ll split time between writing code (integration scripts, platform configuration, bug fixes) and working directly with client engineering and business teams. You’ll develop deep expertise in the platform and become the trusted technical point of contact for your accounts.
What you'll do
Own the technical arc of customer engagements, from scoping the solution through to the system running in production.
Design end-to-end AI systems that meet real reliability, latency, accuracy, and cost constraints. Make the architectural decisions that hold up at production scale.
Build the system yourself, across whatever the stack and product call for. Engagements range from voice and conversational systems at enterprise customers, to developer tooling around Sarvam's APIs, to translation and dubbing pipelines for media customers, to agentic workflows and the MCP servers and infrastructure that underpin them. FDSEs are hands-on engineers, not technical project managers.
Deploy into the customer's environment, working closely with their engineering team on data, infrastructure, and integration constraints.
Set up evaluations that meaningfully measure whether the system is doing its job, and iterate based on what the data shows.
Work across engagements over time, picking up new domains, products, and customer contexts as priorities shift.
Bring what you learn in the field back to Sarvam's product and research teams, and shape what gets built next.
Who we're looking for
We're hiring across levels, 4+ years of experience would be preferred. Strong AI fundamentals, range across the stack, high agency, and a clear track record of shipping matter more than years of experience. We're looking for engineers with a technical degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent.
High agency. You unblock yourself. You don't wait for direction. When a customer is stuck or an engagement is ambiguous, you figure out what to do next and do it.
Strong AI fundamentals. You deeply understand how LLMs and agents work in production: context engineering, memory, RAG, tool use, structured outputs, and the failure modes that actually show up at scale. You've worked with agentic frameworks (LangGraph, LlamaIndex, Google ADK, or equivalent) and with both open and closed source models.
Evals mindset. You know how to evaluate agentic AI systems. You can set up eval pipelines, define metrics that matter for a given use case, and have clear opinions on what good evaluation looks like versus what's just noise.
Systems thinker. You can reason about architecture, reliability, scale, trade-offs, and failure modes across services, databases, queues, and messaging systems (Kafka, SQS, or equivalent). You make design decisions that hold up at production load, not just in a notebook.
Range, and the ability to pick things up fast. Strong Python, comfortable across backend, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or equivalent). You can be useful on a voice agent, a backend service, an evaluation harness, or a developer-facing integration. When you don't know a stack, you pick it up in hours, not weeks.
Builder who stays current. You ship. You have things on the internet, in production, in open source, or in personal projects, that prove it. You follow the frontier closely, try new tools as they launch, and have strong opinions on what's actually useful versus hype.
Customer instinct. You can sit in a room with a customer's engineering team, understand what they actually need, and translate that into clean technical work. You communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Even better if
You've built and deployed AI agents into production, where they did real work for real users.
You have experience deploying AI systems in regulated environments (BFSI, public sector) or with on-premise / VPC deployments.
You have a history of side projects, open source contributions, or shipped products.
You've worked in a customer-facing or product-embedded engineering role before.
You've used Sarvam's models or APIs in your own projects.
Why Sarvam?
Sarvam is a fast-moving, high talent-density team building full-stack AI for India, working on problems that push the frontiers of AI with real population-scale impact.
Work alongside researchers, engineers, builders, and business leaders who move fast and hold each other to a very high bar
High ownership and high impact, from day one
Everything we do is AI-first, from the way we build and ship to the way we think about problems
You can work on problems that could change how an entire country learns, works, and communicates
If you want to work on problems at the frontier of AI in India, Sarvam is the place to be.
