Forward Deployed Engineer/Customer-Facing Software Engineer

Continuum Resource Network•San Francisco, CA

9h•Hybrid

About The Position

Continuum Recruiting is working with a portfolio of venture-backed AI and technology companies that are hiring Forward Deployed Engineers and customer-facing Software Engineers. We are building an evergreen talent pool for multiple current and upcoming opportunities. These roles are at the intersection of software engineering, product, and customers. You may embed with customers, understand complex operational or technical problems, build the production solution, own the implementation through launch, and then use what you learn in the field to improve the underlying product. Previous Forward Deployed Engineer experience is not required for every opportunity. Strong backend, full-stack, or product engineers who enjoy customer interaction, ambiguity, and end-to-end ownership can be excellent fits.

Requirements

Strong software engineering fundamentals with experience shipping and maintaining production software.
Backend, full-stack, product engineering, or systems engineering experience; this is not a pure pre-sales role.
Experience building APIs, integrations, or systems that interact with external services and production data.
Professional proficiency in one or more languages commonly used across these opportunities, including Python and TypeScript/JavaScript.
Ability to independently investigate unfamiliar systems, diagnose problems, and drive solutions through completion.
Comfort working directly with customers or strong evidence that you can communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
High agency and comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain technical decisions, tradeoffs, and failure modes clearly.

Nice To Haves

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Product Engineer, Customer-Facing Engineer, Implementation Engineer, or Solutions Engineer with substantial hands-on coding.
Backend or Full-Stack Software Engineer interested in moving closer to customers.
Applied AI Engineer or AI Product Engineer with strong production software fundamentals.
Experience building production API integrations across multiple third-party systems.
AI/LLM, agentic systems, RAG, orchestration, evaluation, or AI-enabled workflow experience.
Python, TypeScript, React, Node.js, SQL, cloud infrastructure, or distributed systems.
Experience at an early-stage or high-growth startup.
Experience with enterprise customers, regulated environments, healthcare, fintech, vertical SaaS, or other complex operational domains.

Responsibilities

Own technical customer deployments from discovery and scoping through build, integration, go-live, and optimization.
Write production software across backend services, APIs, integrations, data systems, and product interfaces.
Build and configure AI/LLM-powered products, agents, workflows, and automation where relevant.
Integrate with customer systems and third-party platforms, diagnosing difficult issues across APIs, data, infrastructure, and application layers.
Translate ambiguous business or operational problems into concrete technical solutions.
Work directly with technical and non-technical customer stakeholders, earning trust through strong execution and communication.
Debug production issues and iterate rapidly based on real-world usage, performance data, and customer feedback.
Identify recurring implementation patterns and turn them into reusable tooling, infrastructure, or core product capabilities.
Partner with Product and Engineering teams to shape roadmap priorities based on what you learn in the field.
In some roles, support technical scoping, demonstrations, expansion opportunities, or on-site customer implementations.