> 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. # Staff AI/ML Engineer Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/e002aca59f28dd0d Robots & Pencils posts a staff FDE role to build what the customer runs in US with no pay posted. Build and operate production model-training pipelines on Amazon SageMaker using AWS Trainium, working from accelerator and compiler behavior through PyTorch code to deployment. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Robots & Pencils](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/robots-pencils) Posted Sep 16, 2026 by Robots & Pencils · open on Greenhouse as of Nov 8, 2026 Pay not posted US Remote Build and operate production model-training pipelines on Amazon SageMaker using AWS Trainium, working from accelerator and compiler behavior through PyTorch code to deployment. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2Fe002aca59f28dd0d&placement=top) - [View posting at Robots & Pencils](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/robotsandpencils/jobs/5425695008) 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 what the customer runs 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**: External customers - **Level**: Staff+ - **Role**: Individual contributor ### Do you meet what the posting states? The posting reads as a staff-level role. What level are you at now? The work is remote from the US. Can you work from the US? 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**: US - **Work arrangement**: Remote - **Remote work restrictions**: US Remote ## More like this [ServiceNow](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/servicenow) ### [Senior Staff Product Success Architect](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/dcb388279b6f552e) San Diego, CA Remote 2w ago $171,900–$300,800 [6sense](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/6sense) ### [Staff Data Scientist, Forward Deployed](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/858a50fe32ba1077) San Francisco, CA Remote 11d ago $194,736.75–$265,613.9 [Machinify](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/machinify) ### [Staff Data Engineer, Core Migrations](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/9726d76b0f5863ac) US Remote 4mo ago $230,000–$260,000 - [Other jobs at Robots & Pencils (5)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/robots-pencils) ## The job description from Robots & Pencils Posted by Robots & Pencils on Sep 16, 2026 Robots & Pencils is an AWS Partner building production AI systems for enterprise clients who need real engineering, not proofs of concept that never ship. We work forward-deployed, embedded directly with client teams, solving the problems that are too new or too specialized for a typical vendor relationship to handle. **The Role** We're looking for an engineer who can operate and train models on Amazon SageMaker running on AWS Trainium, AWS's custom silicon built specifically for large-scale model training. This isn't a role where you call an API and wait. You'll be walking up the stack: understanding what a training request actually looks like at the Trainium hardware and compiler level, then carrying that understanding all the way up through PyTorch training code and into a production SageMaker pipeline. PyTorch is the backbone of this work. If you know the framework deeply and you're comfortable reasoning about how your code actually behaves on custom accelerator hardware rather than treating it as a black box, this role is built around that skill set specifically. ### What You'll Do - Train and operate models on Amazon SageMaker with AWS Trainium as the underlying compute - Write and optimize PyTorch training code with a real understanding of how it compiles and executes on Trainium (NeuronCore architecture, compiler behavior, memory and throughput tradeoffs) - Diagnose training run issues that show up specifically because of the hardware, not just the model, distinguishing a data or code problem from a compiler or device-level one - Translate a request for "a Trainium job" into an actual working, cost-aware training pipeline, end to end - Tune distributed training runs for throughput and cost on SageMaker's training infrastructure - Work directly with client and internal engineering teams to scope and deliver real production training workloads, not experiments that stay in a notebook ### What You'll Bring - Strong, hands-on PyTorch experience, ideally including distributed or multi-device training - Production experience with Amazon SageMaker for training and/or inference - Comfort working close to the hardware layer: you understand device-specific compilation and can debug issues that are actually about the accelerator, not just the model - AWS Trainium or Inferentia (Neuron SDK) experience is a strong plus; if you don't have it yet but have deep PyTorch and a track record of picking up new hardware targets fast, we want to talk to you - Solid Python fundamentals and comfort operating in a client-facing, production engineering environment [View posting at Robots & Pencils](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/robotsandpencils/jobs/5425695008) ## About Robots & Pencils Robots & Pencils builds enterprise digital and AI solutions and combines consulting with Tiger Pistol’s marketing automation platform for digital advertising. 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