Forward Deployed ML/AI Engineer

Fully remote | Complete engagement job Founded in Palo Alto by Dr. Andrew Ng and Israel Niezen, Factored helps U.S. companies build and scale world-class AI, ML, and Data teams, powered by the top 1% of LATAM talent, with a defining purpose: To empower brilliant humans, unleash their potential, and amplify their impact in the world. At Factored, you’ll be part of a community that values learning, ownership, and authenticity, where your growth is personal and your ideas matter. We’re transparent, curious, and collaborative. We strive for excellence, celebrate diversity, encourage curiosity, and build an environment where you can truly thrive. As a Forward Deployed ML/AI Engineer , you will bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI research and robust, production-grade applications. You will be responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle of intelligent systems, from data ingestion and model training to deployment. This role requires deep technical proficiency in training and tuning classical machine learning models (such as gradient-boosted trees, random forests, and regression suites) alongside modern Generative AI architectures, including Large Language Models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and agentic workflows. You will design scalable APIs, optimize model inference latency, and architect full-stack infrastructure to ensure AI capabilities are seamlessly delivered to end-users. You are both a technical builder and a strategic business partner, embedded within customer environments to deliver measurable AI outcomes. You will bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI research and robust, production-grade applications while serving as a translator between technical capabilities and business objectives. Your mission goes beyond model development—you will own the end-to-end delivery of intelligent systems that directly impact customer business metrics. You will design scalable APIs, optimize model inference, architect infrastructure, AND guide executive stakeholders through complex technical decisions. You will identify high-impact opportunities where machine learning can drive efficiency or unlock new product capabilities, working collaboratively across customer organizations (technical, product, operations, and business teams) to ensure solutions deliver real, measurable business value. This role requires exceptional ability to navigate ambiguity, build trust with diverse stakeholders, and operate effectively in fast-paced, cross-functional customer environments where you'll often be the most technical person in the room—yet must communicate that expertise clearly to non-technical decision-makers. Functional Responsibilities: Cross-Functional Stakeholder Leadership: Translate complex business requirements into technical AI specifications in collaboration with product, operations, and business teams. Serve as the technical authority on AI/ML topics while remaining approachable to non-technical stakeholders. Manage expectations, communicate risks transparently, and maintain stakeholder confidence through complex projects. Lead alignment discussions when technical constraints conflict with business priorities. Coordinate with customer teams to ensure end-to-end delivery. Business Problem Definition & Solution Architecture: Partner with customer leadership to clearly define business problems, success metrics, and constraints. Structure ambiguous problems into clear technical requirements with explicit trade-off analysis. Present multiple solution approaches with pros/cons framed in business terms (time, cost, risk, user impact). Validate that proposed technical solutions will actually solve the stated business problem. End-to-End AI Application Development & Strategic Delivery: Design, build, and maintain full-stack applications integrating classical ML models and Generative AI components. Own delivery of AI applications from discovery through production deployment and ongoing optimization. Anchor projects on shared customer OKRs and measurable business outcomes (not just technical deliverables). API, Pipeline Architecture & Infrastructure Design: Architect scalable data pipelines, feature stores, and robust APIs to serve model predictions efficiently. Design infrastructure for cost optimization, monitoring, and reliability. Balance technical sophistication with operational simplicity and maintainability. Model Optimization, MLOps & Production Excellence: Oversee continuous integration, deployment, monitoring, and fine-tuning of models in production. Establish monitoring and alerting to catch data drift, performance degradation, and cost overruns. Maintain system reliability and ensure models deliver sustained business value post-deployment. Knowledge Transfer & Capability Building: Mentor customer technical teams and upskill internal staff on ML/AI best practices. Document architectural decisions, deployment procedures, and maintenance playbooks. Leave the customer with increased technical capability and reduced dependency on external support. Qualifications: 6+ years of Machine Learning, SWE Gen AI or DS experience (must have productionized models). 3+ years of implementation and customer-facing experience. Proficiency with Classical ML & GenAI: In-depth knowledge of classical models (Scikit-Learn, XGBoost) and Generative AI architectures (LLMs, RAG pipelines, and Vector Databases). Full-Stack Development Capabilities: Strong engineering skills in backend development ( Python , FastAPI /Flask) and ML frontend frameworks ( Streamlit ). MLOps & Production Deployment: Proven experience deploying, monitoring, and maintaining models in production ( Docker , CI/CD pipelines ). Business Problem Translation : Ability to translate business challenges into clear technical solutions, focusing on business outcomes and identifying root causes. Executive Communication & Influence : Ability to explain technical concepts and trade-offs to executives in clear business terms, enabling informed decision-making. Customer Relationship & Stakeholder Autonomy: Experience building trust with customers, managing stakeholders, and working independently in fast-paced, ambiguous environments. Experience working with Databricks Experiment Tracking & Model Registry: Deep familiarity with tools like MLflow or Weights & Biases to track experiments, manage model packaging, and maintain an organized model registry. Cloud Infrastructure: Experience setting up and managing AI/ML environments on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure). Data Engineering Fundamentals: Background in building data pipelines, ETL processes, and working with SQL/NoSQL databases. Nice to Have: Model Optimization: Familiarity with reducing inference latency and managing compute costs (e.g., quantization, caching strategies). Agentic Workflows: Experience building autonomous AI agents or multi-agent orchestration frameworks. Our Benefits: Ownership through equity participation. Annual company retreat. Education bonus for continuous learning. Company-wide winter break. Paid time off. Optional in-person events and meetups. Tailored career roadmaps. High-performance culture. At Factored , we believe that passionate, smart people expect honesty and transparency, as well as the freedom to do the best work of their lives while learning and growing as much as possible. Great people enjoy working with other passionate, smart people, so we believe in hiring right, and are very selective about who joins our team. Once we hire you, we will invest in you and support your career and professional growth in many meaningful ways. We hire people who are supremely intelligent and talented, but we recognize that intelligence is not enough. Perhaps more importantly, we look for those who are also passionate about our mission and are honest, diligent, collaborative, kind to others, and fun to be around. Life is too short to work with people who don’t inspire you. We are a transparent workplace, where EVERYBODY has a voice in building OUR company, and where learning and growth are available to everyone based on their merits, not just on stamps on their resume. As impressive as some of the stamps on our resumes are, we recognize that human talent and passion exist everywhere, and come from many backgrounds, so stamps matter much less than results. All of us are dedicated doers and are highly energetic, focusing vehemently on execution because we know that the best learning happens by doing. We recognize that we are creating OUR COMPANY TOGETHER, which is not only a high-performing fast-growing business but is changing the way the world perceives the quality of technical talent in Latin America. We are fueled by the great positive impact we are making in the places where we do business and are committed to accelerating careers and investing in hundreds (and hopefully thousands) of highly talented data science engineers and data analysts. In short, our business is about people, so we hire the best people and invest as much as possible in making them fall in love with their work, their learning, and their mission. When not nerding out on data science, we love to make music together, play sports, play games, dance salsa, cook delicious food, brew the best coffee, throw the best parties, and generally have a great time with each other.