> 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 AI Native Engineer

Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/268ed77b436ada01

RoboForce posts a staff FDE role to build for teams inside the company in Milpitas, CA with no pay posted. Lead the hands-on architecture and production deployment of RoboForce’s vertical agents and shared agent foundation, reporting directly to the co-founder. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026.

- [RoboForce](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/roboforce)

Posted Jun 11, 2026 by RoboForce · open on Greenhouse as of Nov 8, 2026

Pay not posted Milpitas, CA On-site

Lead the hands-on architecture and production deployment of RoboForce’s vertical agents and shared agent foundation, reporting directly to the co-founder.

- [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F268ed77b436ada01&placement=top)
- [View posting at RoboForce](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/roboforce/jobs/5255989008)

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

Not posted

Staff+ FDE postings, 388 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $197K to $262K, median $225K.

### The work

Builds for teams inside the company

Balance **Mostly building**

Project stages

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

- **Coding**: Writes production code

- **Builds for**: Internal teams

- **Level**: Staff+

- **Role**: Technical lead

### What they ask for

Experience

- **5+ years** software engineering, applied AI, ML systems, or a related field

Background

- **Software engineering**

Visa

- **Sponsors visas**

### Do you meet what the posting states?

The posting asks for 5+ years. How many do you have?

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

The job is in Milpitas, CA. Could you work there?

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**: Milpitas, CA

- **Work arrangement**: On-site

- **Visa sponsorship**: Available

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## The job description from RoboForce

Posted by RoboForce on Jun 11, 2026

### Why RoboForce

RoboForce is an AI robotics company developing Physical AI–powered Robo-Labor for dull, dirty, and dangerous work. The company’s robots are engineered for demanding industrial environments, with a focus on real-world deployment and scalability.

We are hiring a **Lead AI Native Engineer** to build RoboForce’s vertical agents and shared agent foundation. **Reporting to the co-founder,** you will turn frontier models into systems for strategy and engineering. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: you will write code, set architecture, and enable agent development—not lead People programs or organizational transformation.

### Responsibilities

- **Build vertical agents.** Own end-to-end agents for high-value workflows across research, software, hardware, data, and operations—from problem definition through production use.
- **Establish the agent foundation.** Build reusable primitives for models, tools, orchestration, context, memory, retrieval, permissions, human approval, and long-running execution.
- **Create the context layer.** Connect agents to trusted data through APIs, pipelines, MCP servers, and integrations with clear provenance and access control.
- **Own evaluation and reliability.** Build benchmarks, regression tests, tracing, monitoring, and failure-analysis loops across quality, latency, cost, security, and resilience.
- **Advance frontier agent usage.** Evaluate new models, coding agents, SDKs, and patterns, then turn useful capabilities into maintainable systems rather than demos.
- **Support strategic initiatives.** Help company leadership apply agents and analytical systems to market and customer intelligence, partnerships, fundraising, diligence, scenario analysis, and executive decisions.
- **Provide technical leadership.** Set architecture and engineering standards, review designs and code, and create reusable patterns for the technical team.

### Requirements

- 5+ years in software engineering, applied AI, ML systems, or a related field, with strong zero-to-one technical judgment.
- Experience at a frontier AI lab, leading AI company, or comparable team working at the edge of current model capabilities.
- A track record shipping production agentic systems that real users depend on—not only prompts, prototypes, or demos.
- Deep experience with frontier model APIs, tool use, orchestration, context engineering, retrieval, memory, and multi-step workflows.
- Experience building evaluations, regression tests, observability, and production failure-analysis loops for AI systems.
- Exceptional fluency with AI-native development workflows using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, agent SDKs, or equivalent systems, with a rigorous understanding of where agents work and fail.
- Strong product judgment: able to turn an ambiguous decision or workflow into a useful, secure, measurable system.
- Requires 5 days/week in-office collaboration with the team.

### Bonus Qualifications

- Experience with post-training, model evaluation, inference, or research infrastructure at a frontier lab or model company.
- Experience with MCP infrastructure, developer platforms, knowledge graphs, RAG, or secure enterprise integrations.
- Background in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, or another technically complex physical-world domain.

### Benefits

- Competitive stock options/equity programs.
- Health, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) plan.
- Visa sponsorship and green card support for qualified candidates.
- Lunches and dinners, a fully stocked kitchen, and regular team-building events.

[View posting at RoboForce](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/roboforce/jobs/5255989008)

## About RoboForce

Builds deployable Physical AI robot workers for demanding industrial environments, combining robot foundation models, edge compute, and a real-world deployment data flywheel.

Series B · 50–100 people

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