AI Staff Engineer, Forward Deployed

Job overview

The AI Staff Engineer, Forward Deployed role is hybrid in Chicago, IL, or New York City, NY. The stated salary range is $160,000–$200,000 per year, and the role is also eligible for bonus pay. The engineer supports Circana’s agentic ecosystem, building software that applies the company’s consumer-behavior data and systems to business and client needs. The role embeds with business teams and domain experts to understand workflows and deliver production-ready agents, automations, integrations, and platform components. It contributes by determining where human judgment, deterministic automation, or AI agents are appropriate, then building and evaluating solutions that work reliably in production.

What you'll do

• Work with domain experts and system owners to understand processes and exceptions
• determine whether work calls for automation, an agent, or a person
• build agents, MCP servers, integrations, context and prompt designs, plans, and guardrails
• integrate enterprise systems through APIs, databases, file feeds, and schedulers
• build evaluation sets, graders, and regression suites
• debug traces and prevent recurrence with tests
• automate development workflows
• and advance decisions with working prototypes.

What we're looking for

Skills & competencies

circana

ai staff engineer

forward deployed engineer

ai agents

python

mcp servers

enterprise integrations

evaluation suites

chicago il

new york city ny

hybrid

$160k–$200k/year

bonus eligible

Work arrangement

• Weekend coverage required

Benefits & perks

• Paid time off
• medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) for eligible employees
• bonus pay eligibility.

Why this role

Hybrid in Chicago or New York City; forward-deployed engineering across business, client service, product, and client-facing engagements; production AI and agent systems.

About the employer

Circana, LLC. is hiring for this role. Industry: Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology). Sector: 54.