Associate Forward Deployed Engineer

Tenex•New York, NY

72d•Onsite

About The Position

The Associate Forward Deployed Engineer is the core role at Tenex, responsible for turning frontier intelligence into real results for clients. This is not a support or services role, but rather the primary position for engineers who work directly with C-suite leaders to identify and build custom AI systems that operate at the boundary of what is possible. The role involves embedding within client businesses to understand their operations, identify high-value AI applications beyond simple demos, and then architecting, building, and deploying these systems. Engineers in this role are accountable for the production outcomes and continuous improvement of the systems they ship. The role is designed for high-slope generalists who are strong engineers, have experience shipping production software, have moved into AI, and demonstrate rapid improvement. At this level, engineers are expected to own a workstream, make technical decisions, and communicate effectively with both technical teams and C-suite executives. They will also contribute to the development of Tenex's internal software development lifecycle platform, which is being rebuilt around coding agents to increase autonomy and efficiency in delivering production systems.

Requirements

Shipped production software that real people depended on (at a job, own company, or built alone).
Built something real with LLMs and can honestly explain its successes and failures.
Ability to become productive in an unfamiliar domain within days.
Ability to explain a technical decision to a CEO as clearly as to another engineer.
Uses AI in daily work and has opinions on how to do it well.
One or two years into a career, with a focus on built experience over tenure.

Responsibilities

Embed inside a real business to learn how it makes money and find where AI would create real value.
Turn ambiguity into a product direction and a technical plan, and defend these decisions.
Ship the entire system, making build-versus-buy and architecture calls independently.
Measure production outcomes and continuously improve the system after deployment.
Own a workstream outright, deciding what gets built and in what order.
Act as the technical voice for the client on the workstream.
Re-scope work when the initial scope is incorrect.
Structure work for agents, engineer durable context, evaluate outputs, and determine the balance between deterministic software and human judgment.
Contribute to the development of reusable agent systems, evaluations, and tools that improve future engagements.
Work at the boundary between the capabilities of the newest models and what can be made reliable in production.