Principal Forward Deployed Engineer (relocation to Bulgaria)

We are looking for a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer to join our team with eventual relocation to Bulgaria. EPAM is renowned for delivering cutting-edge technological solutions to transform businesses worldwide.

We are building AI-native solutions for our clients - products where LLM and its harness are the core of the value. This is a builder's role: you and your team are responsible for building agentic systems, writing the production code, and standing up the evals and observability. You will work closely with SMEs and end-users to understand where the real value lies, and you design the feedback loops.

The deadline for submission is 01.12.2026.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and ship end-to-end AI-native systems including agents, workflows, RAG and integration harnesses
• Write production-grade Python code for integrations, APIs, data access and deployment
• Work directly with subject matter experts and end-users through interviews, user acceptance testing and workflow observations
• Engage early in projects to shape use cases and check technical feasibility
• Build evaluation pipelines and use them to prove system utility
• Design for failure in the agent loop by implementing retries, model fallbacks, cost limits and human-in-the-loop actions
• Capture domain expertise and repeatable workflows to ensure success across engagements. Troubleshoot and resolve technical challenges in collaboration with the broader team
• Ensure adherence to engineering excellence standards including test-driven development and continuous integration practices

Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with a strong track record of building production AI and LLM applications
• Expert-level Python skills and solid software engineering fundamentals
• Hands-on experience with agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph or Semantic Kernel and major LLM providers
• Strong RAG and retrieval skills including vector databases, embeddings, hybrid search and context management
• Production deployment experience on major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure or GCP with containerization and CI/CD
• Proven experience evaluating generative AI quality using custom evaluation frameworks and observability tools
• Proven capability to work closely with clients, lead discovery conversations and explain technical trade-offs to diverse audiences
• Strong agent-design judgment and sound engineering judgment under ambiguity to balance speed, quality and scope
• C1 level English language proficiency
• An academic degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field

Nice to have

• Experience designing experiments, A/B testing and iterating on AI products against real user behavior
• Strong background in NLP, Data Science or applied machine learning with experience moving models into production
• Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent-to-Agent (A2A), Agent Skills and emerging agent standards
• Experience with enterprise AI platforms such as AWS Bedrock AgentCore, Databricks Genie or Microsoft Foundry
• Exposure to AI governance, security and compliance including guardrails and prompt-injection prevention

Benefits

• Opportunity to Engineer your Future and to drive the world’s digital transformation with top industry clients
• Personal development program that will allow you to be valued for your strengths
• Wide range of professional trainings and workshops
• Being part of a collaborative, fast-growing, and innovative design team
• Established and accelerated growth toward different career paths, competencies, and roles
• Broad projects variety and possible mobility between projects over the time
• Collaboration in a multicultural environment and exchange of best practices with colleagues around the world
• Varied social benefits, Sports, Transportation and Health programs
• Work-life balance and flexible schedule, team buildings and sport opportunities
• Modern office/collaboration spaces (incl. new Infinity Tower business center, Sofia)
• Hybrid By Design - we provide you with the best productivity options from the 2 worlds. Meet, socialize and enjoy F2F time with your colleagues, while working from the modern EPAM's office for a few days per week and benefit from the EPAM's virtual working environment - making you able to be productive and work from remote for the rest of the week