Want to know if this job is worth applying to?
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Hybrid
Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems.
We are hiring Forward Deployed Engineers to join a new Stealth National Security incubation within Red Cell. You'll work directly with federal and national-security customers, and your role will sit at the intersection of software engineering, customer delivery, product development, and mission execution.
As an FDE, you will embed with customer teams, understand operational workflows, identify high-value use cases, and build production-ready systems that solve real mission problems. You will move quickly from discovery to prototype to deployment, while maintaining the engineering discipline required for secure and regulated environments.
This is a highly hands-on engineering role. You should be comfortable writing code, debugging systems, working with messy customer environments, translating vague requirements into concrete technical plans, and communicating clearly with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
Our stack may include TypeScript, Python, Java, React, FastAPI or similar backend frameworks, Postgres, cloud infrastructure, containerized services, workflow orchestration, observability tooling, and LLM / agentic AI frameworks. We care less about exact tool familiarity and more about strong engineering judgment, adaptability, and ability to ship in complex environments.
Because this role supports federal and national-security customers, U.S. citizenship is required with an active security clearance.
Washington, DC / Northern Virginia or in another area near a U.S. military concentration preferred. This role may require regular customer-facing work, including virtual and onsite meetings, secure-facility work, or travel depending on program needs (~25%).
This is a chance to build software that directly supports national-security missions. You will work on high-impact problems where AI, automation, and modern engineering can materially improve how mission teams operate. You will not be far removed from the user or buried in a narrow implementation lane; you will be expected to understand the mission, build the system, deploy it, and make it work in the real world.
If you want to be on the cutting edge of technology, building AI solutions for the future, and are up for a challenge, let’s talk!
Salary Range: $130,000-240,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.
#LI-RCP
Our Red Cell Partners Benefits:
For full-time roles
We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer: You’ll receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability.
Applicant Data Disclosure
By submitting an application, you acknowledge that Red Cell Partners, LLC ("Red Cell") uses third-party service providers to facilitate its recruitment and hiring processes. These providers include applicant tracking systems, candidate verification platforms, and fraud detection tools (collectively, "Hiring Platforms"). Your application materials, including your résumé, cover letter, work samples, responses to application questions, and any other information you submit, may be transmitted to and processed by these Hiring Platforms for the following purposes:
Applications that are flagged through this process as containing indicators of fraud or material misrepresentation may be declined from further consideration. If you have questions about the status of your application or the evaluation process, please contact talent@redcellpartners.com.
Red Cell requires its Hiring Platform providers to process your information solely for the purposes described above and in accordance with applicable law. Your information will be retained only for as long as necessary to fulfill these purposes and any applicable legal obligations, after which it will be deleted in accordance with Red Cell's data retention policies.
For more information about how your data is used, please refer to our Privacy Policy and Applicant Privacy Notice.