principal forward deployed engineer.

Our client, is seeking a high-performing Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to serve as the foundational technical leader and right-hand partner to the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence.

In this high-impact player-coach leadership role, you will bridge complex system architecture, multi-agent AI engineering, and strategic business delivery. You will act as the technical anchor for the Forward Deployed Engineering organization—owning high-priority AI deployments end-to-end while building, mentoring, and scaling a world-class team of Forward Deployed Engineers. Balancing hands-on technical architecture (~30%–40%+) with team leadership, you will ship production-grade, agentic AI solutions directly into production while establishing enterprise-wide technical standards, playbooks, and architectures for all future AI engagements.

Position Type: Full-Time, Permanent

Location: Toronto, ON

Work Arrangement: Hybrid (3 days per week on-site at the corporate facility / 2 days remote)

Advantages
Foundational AI Leadership Scope: Serve as the founding technical lead for an expanding Forward Deployed Engineering practice, working directly alongside the VP of Artificial Intelligence.

Cutting-Edge Agentic Sandbox: Architect and deploy state-of-the-art multi-agent AI systems, virtual agents, and automated workflow solutions for high-stakes enterprise use cases.

Player-Coach Impact: Maintain hands-on involvement in code architecture and deployment while scaling a high-performing engineering practice over the next 12–18 months.

Full-Time Permanent Stability: Secure a high-visibility, permanent executive engineering role within a global market leader expanding its local AI footprint.

Responsibilities
Hands-On Agentic Architecture & Building: Design, build, ship, and iterate on production-grade multi-agent AI systems, virtual agents, and workflow automations (e.g., virtual sales agents, cash forecast automation, and API-integrated customer service agents).

Technical Practice & Team Leadership: Act as the direct manager and technical mentor for the growing Forward Deployed Engineering team; recruit, assess, and scale the practice to a 7–10 person engineering team over 12–18 months.

End-to-End MVP Delivery: Own AI use cases end-to-end—from initial scoping and rapid prototyping to production MVP delivery—ensuring rapid user adoption and clear business value.

Platform & Stack Standardization: Collaborate with core AI engineering groups to establish enterprise technical standards, reusable agentic frameworks, tooling pipelines, and deployment practices.

Governance & Responsible AI: Ensure all engineered solutions strictly adhere to enterprise Responsible AI frameworks, security protocols, and data governance standards.

Qualifications
Agentic Frameworks Mastery: Direct, hands-on experience building with modern agentic frameworks (such as LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar).

Model Context Protocol & APIs: Proven experience building Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, complex API integrations, and custom endpoints.

GPU & Infrastructure Optimization: Experience with GPU cluster provisioning, model training/fine-tuning pipelines, and throughput optimization.

AI-Native Tooling Literacy: Demonstrated fluency using AI-native development tools (e.g., Cursor, Lovable, or similar LLM-driven coding platforms).

Forward Deployed / Solutions Experience: Track record in product-led software, AI, or advanced analytics environments (e.g., high-growth AI startups or enterprise scale-ups) serving as the bridge between technical execution and business needs.

Education: Strong foundation with a Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Preferred Assets & Nice-to-Haves
Proven people management experience recruiting, mentoring, and leveling up engineering talent.

Background working within product-led software or high-growth AI startups.

Summary
If you are a tech-savvy Principal Forward Deployed Engineer who pairs hands-on mastery of agentic AI frameworks (LangGraph, AutoGen, MCP) with player-coach team leadership and a track record of shipping production MVPs, this full-time permanent role in Toronto is an extraordinary career step. Bring your AI architecture precision, building mindset, and team leadership to our client's rapidly expanding AI team today!

Randstad Canada is committed to fostering a workforce reflective of all peoples of Canada. As a result, we are committed to developing and implementing strategies to increase the equity, diversity and inclusion within the workplace by examining our internal policies, practices, and systems throughout the entire lifecycle of our workforce, including its recruitment, retention and advancement for all employees. In addition to our deep commitment to respecting human rights, we are dedicated to positive actions to affect change to ensure everyone has full participation in the workforce free from any barriers, systemic or otherwise, especially equity-seeking groups who are usually underrepresented in Canada's workforce, including those who identify as women or non-binary/gender non-conforming; Indigenous or Aboriginal Peoples; persons with disabilities (visible or invisible) and; members of visible minorities, racialized groups and the LGBTQ2+ community.

Randstad Canada is committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible workplace for all its candidates and employees by supporting their accessibility and accommodation needs throughout the employment lifecycle. We ask that all job applications please identify any accommodation requirements by sending an email to View email address on randstad.com to ensure their ability to fully participate in the interview process.

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