> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt.

# Lead, Engineering Excellence

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/22a12cc51fef0229

Bain posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in Atlanta, GA and 9 more, at $179,875–$203,925 base, level with the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Lead engineering transformation for Bain's Vector, driving AI-assisted and AI-led maturity across clients' software development organizations. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [Bain](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/bain)

First seen Sep 2, 2026 · open on Avature as of Nov 8, 2026

**$179,875–$203,925** *annualized* Atlanta, GA +9 Hybrid, 3 days a week in office Full-time

Lead engineering transformation for Bain's Vector, driving AI-assisted and AI-led maturity across clients' software development organizations.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F22a12cc51fef0229&placement=top)
- [View posting at Bain](https://careers.bain.com/jobs/FolderDetail/Lead-Engineering-Excellence/104885)

Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so.

## At a glance

### Posted base pay

$180K–$204K Level with the median

Midpoint $192K · median $190K

This job $180K to $204K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K.

### The work

Builds what the customer runs

Balance **Mostly pre-sales or support**

Project stages

1. Pre-sales (not covered)
2. Proof of concept (not covered)
3. Implementation
4. Operations (not covered)

Travel **Up to 60%**

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: Both

- **Level**: Senior

- **Role**: Technical lead

### What they ask for

Experience

- **5+ years** full-stack development
- **2+ years** micro-service API development
- **1+ years** AI tools such as Cursor or Claude Code
- **1+ years** consulting *Preferred*
- **2+ years** SQL or NoSQL databases *Preferred*

Background

- **Software engineering**
- **Consulting**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting asks for 1+ years. How many do you have?

The posting reads as a senior role. What level are you at now?

The job is in Atlanta, GA · Austin, TX · +8 more. Could you work in one of these?

Which of these have you used in production?

Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent.

[What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths)

## Conditions

- **Location**: Atlanta, GA · Austin, TX · Boston, MA · Chicago, IL · Dallas, TX · Houston, TX · Los Angeles, CA · New York, NY · San Francisco, CA · Seattle, WA

- **Work arrangement**: Hybrid, 3 days a week in office

- **Remote work restrictions**: Hybrid with in-office presence at least 3 days per week at a client location or Bain home office in a listed U.S. location.

- **Employment type**: Full-time

- **Travel**: Up to 60%

- **Pay**:

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Boston, MA · Charlotte, NC · +4 more Hybrid 1mo ago

$110,000–$200,000

- [Other jobs at Bain (1)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/bain)

## The job description from Bain

### WHAT MAKES US A GREAT PLACE TO WORK

We are proud to be consistently recognized as one of the world’s best places to work. We are currently the top ranked consulting firm on Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list and have earned the #1 overall spot a record seven times.

Extraordinary teams are at the heart of our business strategy, but these don’t happen by chance. They require intentional focus on bringing together a broad set of backgrounds, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and skills in a supportive and inclusive work environment. We hire people with exceptional talent and create an environment in which every individual can thrive professionally and personally.

### WHO YOU’LL WORK WITH

Bain’s Vector leads the firm’s software development efforts and defines engineering standards for Bain globally.

You will solve cutting-edge problems for a variety of industries as a software engineer specializing in strategy for Engineering Transformations. As a member of a diverse engineering team, you will participate in the full software development life cycle.

You will collaborate with diverse product and engineering teams to build help engineering organizations transform across people, process, and technology to support business needs for both consumer and enterprise environments.

### WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Help clients improve AI-assisted or AI-led maturity across people, process, and technology
- Help developers improve productivity through adoption of AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex etc.)
- Design, develop, and document AI applications aligned to business outcomes.
- Develop prompt engineering strategies, implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and optimize model inference latency and cost
- Develop and champion modern software development best practices and concepts to technical audience and business stakeholders
- Participate within a cross functional product team to develop and deploy production quality code for clients
- Participate in the full software development life cycle including architecture design, writing documentation and unit/integration tests, identifying issues and resolution, writing clean code, and conducting code reviews

**Provide technical guidance to external clients and internal stakeholders in Bain (80%): **

- Drive AI-led or AI-assisted transformation to improve productivity and quality across the PDLC
- Explore new innovations in AI and software development to further improve productivity and modularity.
- Take an active role in ideation processes, alongside consulting and client colleagues, to bring innovative solutions to problems
- Work in a collaborative manner with clients’ technical teams to define technical approaches to implementing designed solutions, including new product architecture, data flows and integration strategies, build processes, etc

**Scope, architect, design, develop, build, and release robust and scalable applications (20%):**

- Translate business requirements into technical requirements and implementation details
- Build complex systems that are extensible, easy to understand, and self-maintaining
- Integration with third-party systems to enable use cases that power business solutions

- Work closely with product and design to create modern AI systems.
- Build end-to-end AI agent systems, including reasoning loops, planning mechanisms, and tool orchestration frameworks
- Develop and optimize LLM-powered applications using advanced prompting, structured outputs, and model routing strategies
- Design and implement multi-agent architectures (planner, executor, verifier, critic patterns)
- Build scalable retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines with optimized embedding and retrieval strategies

### ABOUT YOU

### We are looking for someone who has

- Bachelor’s in computer science or a related technical field; or equivalent work experience

- Experience in an engineering role at a start-up or fast-growing tech company, with a strong track record of increasing mastery and responsibility
- 5+ years of experience with full-stack development
- 2+ years of experience with micro-service API development (e.g., RESTful, GraphQL, gRPC) with frameworks (e.g. FastAPI, Swagger, OpenAPI etc.)
- 1+ years of experience with AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.)
- Strong knowledge in development best practices (automated testing frameworks, CI/CD etc.)
- Strong computer science fundaments in data structures, algorithms, automated testing, object-oriented programming, performance complexity, and implications of computer architecture on software performance
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills
- Deep understanding of large language models (LLMs) and transformer architectures
- Strong knowledge of prompt engineering, structured prompting, and reasoning control techniques
- Experience designing and deploying retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems
- Ability to evaluate model performance beyond accuracy (reasoning quality, hallucination rate, task success)
- Understanding of tokenization, context window limits, and cost optimization strategies
- Strong Python proficiency for AI development

### Ideal candidates will also have experience in

- Master’s in computer science or a related technical field
- 1+ years of experience in consulting
- 2+ years of experience with SQL or NoSQL databases
- Experience with PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or SQL Server
- Experience working on public cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and associated deep understanding of failover, high-availability, and high scalability
- Ability to explain and discuss technical concepts and methodologies with colleagues and clients from other disciplines

- This role follows a hybrid model, requiring in-office presence at least 3 days per week, either at a client location or at your Bain home office
- Travel is required (40-60%)

### U.S. COMPENSATION INFORMATION

Compensation for this role includes base salary, annual discretionary performance bonus, 401(k) plan with an annual employer contribution based on years of service and Bain’s best in class benefits package (details listed below).

Some local governments in the United States require a good-faith, reasonable salary range be included in job postings for open roles. The estimated annualized compensation for this role is as follows:

In Atlanta, Boston, Texas, and Chicago the good-faith, reasonable annualized full-time salary range for this role is $179,875

In California, New York, Washington, DC and Washington State, the good-faith, reasonable annualized full-time salary for this role is $203,925

Placement within these ranges will vary based on factors such as experience, education, training, and skill level.

Compensation also includes a discretionary annual performance bonus, 401(k) plan with employer contribution, and Bain’s best-in-class benefits—including full premium coverage for medical, dental, and vision, generous paid time off, and more.

Annual discretionary performance bonus

This role may also be eligible for other elements of discretionary compensation

4.5% 401(k) company contribution, which increases after 3 years of service and is 100% vested upon start date

Bain & Company's comprehensive benefits and wellness program is designed to help employees achieve personal independence, protection and stability in the areas most important to you and your family.

Bain pays 100% individual employee premiums for medical, dental and vision programs, offering one of the most comprehensive medical plans for employees without impacting your paycheck

Generous paid time off, including parental leave, sick leave and paid holidays

Fully vested 401(k) company contribution

Paid Life and Long-Term Disability insurance

[View posting at Bain](https://careers.bain.com/jobs/FolderDetail/Lead-Engineering-Excellence/104885)

## About Bain

Global management consulting partnership advising large enterprises and investors on strategy, performance, M&A, and AI-enabled transformation, with a distinctive results-tied, implementation-heavy model.

Bootstrapped · 5000+ people

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- [Compare senior FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/senior)
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