Forward Deployed Engineer - Implementation Technical Lead

The Role

You are an embedded builder who bridges frontier AI products and production-grade reality inside our clients' operations. After our Fusion Discovery practice ships the prioritized roadmap, you are the named technical principal who turns that roadmap into running software — code, deploy, integrate, ship — inside the client's Azure subscription, against their data, under their compliance constraints, on the calendar they signed up for. 

You are the FDE in the literal sense the term means in 2026: an embedded operator with a founder's mindset who owns outcomes end to end. Discovery hands you a scoped milestone roadmap and a Statement of Work. You take it from there. You can expect to travel up to 30% of the time with this position.

What This Role Is — And What It Is Not 

The FDE market is hot in 2026 and the role definition varies wildly across companies. PTM's flavor is specific, and we are explicit about it. 

You will: write production code that ships into the client's runtime. Build agentic systems with PydanticAI. Stand up event-driven ETL on Azure Container App Jobs. Scaffold lovable.dev → Static Web App frontends backed by FastAPI or ASP.NET Core BFFs (Backends-for-Frontends). Provision the whole stack with Bicep + azd. Wire structured logging, LLM cost telemetry, and the auth gateway from commit #1. Own the engagement's technical outcome. 

You will not: run discovery interviews, facilitate executive prioritization workshops, or produce the Solution Architecture Document. Our Fusion Discovery practice does that upstream and hands you their output. You may sit in on the final readout to take ownership of the implementation phase. The customer-facing volume sits with Discovery. You carry the technical volume. 

If you came into the FDE category because you want to be the engineer who actually ships the system the slideware promised — at a firm where validators are written before production code, every interface gets a documented contract, and the first commit boots a working full local stack — this is the role. 

The Outcome We Hire You For

In your first twelve months, you will serve as the technical lead on three to five Fusion Development engagements. Each one ships: 

• A working production deployment in the client's Azure subscription, deployed via azd up and reproducible on demand. 
• Vertical slices of demonstrable client value delivered against the milestone roadmap from Discovery. 
• At least one KPI moved, with structured telemetry to prove it. 
• A clean handoff document for ongoing operations: runbooks, infrastructure contracts, and the digital twin of the decisions made along the way. 

What You Will Actually Do

Approximate time split: ~45% writing code, ~30% integration, infrastructure, and observability plumbing, ~15% client technical touchpoints (architecture standups, demo days, escalations), ~10% specifications, interface contracts, and engagement reflections. The customer-facing volume is lower than Big Lab FDE pool roles because PTM's Discovery practice carries the customer-facing volume upstream. 

• Convert the Discovery roadmap into an executable engineering plan with swimlanes, interface contracts, and validator-first todos. 

• Scaffold the first commit as a working local full stack — frontend, backend, database, auth gateway, observability, IaC (Infrastructure as Code) — bootable with one command on a fresh clone. We do not believe in scaffold-then-wire-later. 

• Implement Python services (FastAPI BFFs, event-driven ETL on Azure Container App Jobs, PydanticAI agentic systems) under our RPIR validator-first loop: Research, Plan, Implement validators RED, implement production code GREEN, Review. 

• Build ASP.NET Core BFFs when the client's existing investment or team strength calls for it. Use .NET Aspire AppHost for local orchestration when there are three or more services or any polyglot mix. 

• Wire frontends scaffolded via lovable.dev into your BFF, hosted on Azure Static Web Apps. 

• Stand up the Azure footprint with Bicep + azd: subscription-level deployments, module contracts, mandatory tagging, Key Vault-backed configuration, and what-if gates on every pull request. 

• Instrument structured logging from commit #1 (structlog with callsite metadata), wire OTEL (OpenTelemetry) to the Aspire dev dashboard locally and to Azure Monitor in production, and emit LLM cost telemetry on every model call. 

• Stand up the auth gateway: Traefik with ForwardAuth in containers, Microsoft Entra ID by default, with Auth0, Okta, Google Workspace OIDC, AWS Cognito, or generic OIDC as first-class alternates when the client's identity posture calls for it. 

• Pair-program with the second engineer on the engagement under Maker-Checker. Solo delivery is not a PTM pattern. 

• Address the blockers that prevent AI from reaching enterprise-grade maturity in real environments: data readiness, integration complexity, state management, identity boundaries, observability gaps, and LLM cost runaway. 

• Feed lessons back into PTM's living digital twin — the Fusion Covenant, the persona library, the agentic-coding template, the methodology. Every engagement you ship updates our rules. 

The Stack You Will Work In 

PTM is Azure-first and opinionated. The stack is documented. Deviations require architect approval with written rationale captured in the SAD. 

• Backend: Python (FastAPI, Pydantic, PydanticAI for agentic systems) and ASP.NET Core (latest LTS) for BFFs and APIs. Choose by client posture and team strength. 

• Frontend: React + Vite scaffolded via lovable.dev, hosted on Azure Static Web Apps. 

• Data: Azure SQL, Dataverse, Microsoft Fabric OneLake, Azure AI Search. PostgreSQL when extensions justify it (Azure Flexible Server or self-hosted on Azure VM). Pure Python ETL with duckdb + delta-rs over PySpark unless the client has a Fabric mandate. 

• AI: Azure AI Foundry primary; OpenAI and Anthropic direct as alternates. PydanticAI for agentic systems with typed state, structured outputs, and tool calls. 12-factor agents principles. 

• Infrastructure: Bicep + azd, GitHub Actions, Docker + Azure Container Registry. .NET Aspire AppHost for local orchestration when warranted. 

• Observability: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights JS SDK on the frontend. Structured JSON logs with correlation IDs from day one. LLM cost telemetry mandatory on every model call. 

• Identity: Entra ID default. Auth0, Okta, Google Workspace OIDC, AWS Cognito, and generic OIDC are first-class alternates. Traefik + ForwardAuth as the containerized gateway pattern. 

• Local orchestration: .NET Aspire AppHost when there are three or more services, docker compose for homogeneous pairs, uv run for single-service spikes. 

• One-off scripts: uv with PEP 723 inline metadata. Never a half-built requirements.txt. 

What PTM's Engineering Discipline Looks Like 

This is the part that differentiates PTM from a Big Lab FDE pool. We are opinionated about how engineering happens. 

• Validators first, always. Tests, linters, and type-checkers are written and confirmed RED before production code is written. Production code exists to turn validators GREEN. Python projects mandate ruff + pyright on every commit. 

• Contracts before code. Every interface — API boundary, DB schema, shared type, inter-service message — gets a formal .contract.md in /docs/schema/ during planning. Implementation does not begin until the contract is accepted. 

• Right-sized process. Trivial fixes go direct. Medium work uses the RPIR loop. Large work decomposes into swimlanes with parallel specialists. We do not skip process for big work, and we do not over-process small work. 

• First commit is a working local full stack. Frontend, backend, database, auth gateway, observability, IaC, bootable with one command on a fresh clone. No "scaffold first, wire later." This is the floor, not the ceiling. 

• Maker-Checker over solo delivery. Pair on architectural choices, contracts, and material deliverables. 

• Living digital twin. When reality drifts from specification, we update the specification. Every engagement-significant lesson is captured in a reflection and folded back into the methodology. 

If this sounds like overhead, this is not the right firm. If this sounds like the engineering culture you have been missing on FDE pool work, keep reading.  

What "Senior" and "High-Agency" Mean Here 

Same as the FDE category at large, with PTM's specific edges: 

• You can stand up a working greenfield Azure deployment from a Discovery roadmap, solo, in under a week of focused work. 

• You can read a Discovery Solution Architecture Document and identify the three implementation risks the consultant did not see. You raise them in the engagement kickoff, not in production. 

• You can write a contract for an interface that has not been built yet and have it be useful to a second engineer six weeks later. 

• You can sit in a client architecture standup and defend a respectful "no" to a poorly-considered scope addition without losing the relationship. 

• You own outcomes. The engagement either ships its milestones or it does not, and you carry that. 

PTM gives you scope (via the Discovery handoff), methodology (the Fusion Covenant, the agentic-coding template, the persona library), and a second engineer for Maker-Checker pairing. Within that, you operate with high autonomy.