Technical Lead

Senior Foundry/AIP Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) About the Role Our client is building a dedicated Palantir practice designed to deliver large-scale Foundry and AIP implementations across enterprise environments. The team focuses on enabling data and AI transformation within industries such as financial services, healthcare, supply chain, and manufacturing. Engineers joining at this stage will play a key role in shaping delivery standards, architecture approaches, and best practices for Foundry Ontologies, AIP agent deployments, and decision intelligence solutions across multiple client engagements. In addition to client-facing work, the platform is expected to be leveraged internally to support data-driven decision-making and AI initiatives. This role offers an opportunity to influence foundational architecture patterns, reusable assets, and implementation methodologies that will be adopted across future projects. You will work within a global AI and Data practice focused on delivering measurable business value through modern data platforms and AI technologies. What You'll Do You operate as the primary technical owner on complex engagements, from scoping through production handoff: • Lead Foundry Ontology design across multi-source enterprise environments: defining object type hierarchies, link type semantics, property type governance, and branch strategies for production data models. • Architect end-to-end pipeline systems from raw ingestion through semantic layer, connecting 10+ source systems with observable data quality and documented lineage using Transforms and Pipeline Builder. • Own AIP deployments: design agent architectures in AIP Agent Studio, configure tool registries backed by Foundry functions, and build evaluation harnesses that validate LLM reasoning before any agent touches a production workflow. • Design and ship AIP Logic chains: multi-step reasoning workflows grounded on Ontology objects, with structured outputs, action types, and writeback patterns that close the loop from insight to operation. • Drive client-facing technical discovery: lead workshops that map operational processes to Foundry Ontology models, surface integration constraints, and produce architecture decision records that hold up in production review. • Translate big, ambiguous business problems into Foundry delivery scopes. You push back on requirements that are technically solvable but operationally meaningless, and you advocate for designs that match how users actually make decisions. • Define delivery standards for the practice: author Ontology design guidelines, AIP agent patterns, Workshop architecture principles, and code quality standards junior engineers follow on every engagement. • Mentor junior FDEs through code review, architecture walkthroughs, and embedded coaching on client engagements. What You'll Build • Enterprise Ontology architecture: multi-domain object models linking financial, operational, and clinical data across 10+ source systems, with governance frameworks clients can extend post-engagement. • Production AIP agent deployments: agents running in client environments against live Ontology data, with tool registries, memory configurations, and monitoring pipelines in place at launch. • AIP Logic evaluation frameworks: structured test harnesses that validate LLM reasoning steps against labelled Ontology objects before any output surfaces to an operator or decision workflow. • Workshop decision intelligence centres: operational applications wired to live Ontology objects, with action types that complete closed-loop workflows (approve, flag, escalate, route) and configurable user role logic. • Practice accelerators: reusable Ontology templates, Pipeline Builder patterns, and AIP agent scaffolding that compress new engagement ramp time by 40%+ compared to a cold start. • Internal capability assets: architecture decision records and delivery playbooks that encode what works across engagements and translate into competitive advantage on the next proposal. What We're Looking For Required: • 5+ years of production Foundry experience. You have owned Ontology architecture, designed multi-source pipeline systems, and shipped Workshop applications clients depend on for daily operations. • Deep Foundry data layer expertise: Transforms (PySpark, Polars, and SQL), Pipeline Builder topology design, Object Storage partitioning strategies, Ontology branch management, and observable data quality patterns. • Demonstrated AIP delivery in production; AIP Logic chains and AIP agent deployments outside of sandbox. You can articulate trade-offs between agent architectures and know when to use function-backed objects vs. direct LLM calls. • Proven ability to break down large, ambiguous business problems into concrete Ontology and application designs. You can walk into a client's operations and identify what belongs in the Ontology, what belongs in an action type, and what belongs in a Logic function. • Fluency with messy organizational data: overlapping source systems, inconsistent entity identifiers, conflicting data owners. You have built governance structures that survive post-engagement, not just demos that look clean. • Production Python and SQL that other engineers inherit code with the next maintainer in mind, documented design decisions, shared transforms structured for reuse. • Client-facing technical leadership; you have run requirements workshops, managed technical relationships with client engineers and architects, and presented architecture decisions to mixed technical and executive audiences. • Engineering judgment under ambiguity; you make decisions with 70% information, document your assumptions, and know when to escalate vs. unblock. Nice to Have • Domain depth in financial services (insurance, reinsurance, risk), healthcare (claims, clinical operations, population health), supply chain, or discrete manufacturing. • Experience with Contour for exploratory Ontology analysis or Slate for custom embedded applications in legacy enterprise environments. • Palantir Foundry or AIP certification at associate or professional level. • Experience standing up Foundry in greenfield environments, including Data Connection source configuration and codec development. • Familiarity with MLflow, PyTorch, or other ML tooling integrated into Foundry Code Repositories for model training and deployment workflows. • Track record leading cross-functional delivery programs with 3+ engineering contributors. Why Now At a mature Palantir FDE, you inherit architecture built by someone who left three years ago. As a senior FDE, you write the architecture. The standards you define for Ontology design, AIP agent patterns, and Workshop delivery become the firm's reference, and your professional reputation compounds with every engagement that follows them. • Ownership: full technical accountability for engagement architecture from scoping through production, with direct visibility to practice leadership and clients. • Scope: financial services, healthcare, supply chain, and manufacturing in a single practice means you are not trapped in one domain for the next decade. • Trajectory: as the practice scales, the engineers who designed the foundation move into principal and technical director roles. External candidates compete for positions after you have already built the platform they interview on. • Leverage: your reusable accelerators and Ontology standards multiply across every future engagement. Your work does not reset at the end of each project.