Forward Deployed Engineer I

Ascent Developer Solutions • Los Angeles, CA

2d • $90,000 - $105,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Ascent Developer Solutions is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to build software for complex real estate lending workflows. The engineer will embed with business teams to understand their work in detail and build AI-powered tools that scale their expertise. This is an engineering-focused role involving production code, security review, and post-launch support. The position reports directly to the Head of Technology, with scope expanding as projects are delivered.

The role works on-site at Ascent’s Encino office Monday through Thursday, with Fridays work-from-home. The salary range is $90,000 to $105,000, with a discretionary annual bonus of 15%.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 1–3 years of professional experience writing code relied on by real users, in software engineering, automation, data engineering, or a technical analyst role involving substantial coding.
• Working proficiency in Python or TypeScript and SQL, plus experience with REST APIs and unstructured data.
• Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs, including prompting, structured outputs, and document extraction, through professional or personal projects.
• Daily use of AI coding tools and a habit of verifying their output with tests.
• Familiarity with loop engineering: agent workflows that act, check their own results, and stop or escalate to a person at the appropriate point.
• Ability to ask good questions before building and explain technical ideas to non-technical colleagues.
• Systems thinking, including consideration of how workflow changes affect surrounding data, systems, and people.
• Organization, attention to detail, and strong writing skills; workflow maps and specifications are deliverables in this role.
• Interest in financial services.

Nice To Haves

• Exposure to lending, real estate, construction, or accounting.
• Experience with OutSystems or another low-code platform, Microsoft 365/SharePoint, or Jira.
• Portfolio, GitHub profile, or other examples of shipped work.

Responsibilities

• Embed with an assigned business team and learn its work by doing it alongside team members.
• Document workflows step by step, including inputs, systems, decisions, handoffs, exceptions, and upstream and downstream processes, in a standard format reviewed and approved by the team.
• Build and ship production automations for well-defined workflows.
• Work with Platform Engineering to run automations on the existing platform, using shared data, integrations, and monitoring, and to fit them into existing systems.
• Write specifications and acceptance criteria for work belonging in the core lending platform and hand them to Platform Engineering.
• Write tests and documentation for each automation, and take it through code review and security and AI governance review before production.
• Use least-privilege agent identities, audit logging, and human review for outputs affecting loan decisions or disbursements.
• Measure and report time and error rates before and after each automation.
• Train users, collect feedback, and resolve issues promptly after launch.
• Monitor shipped automations, respond to failures, and maintain runbooks for handling exceptions.
• Learn the lending business from application through payoff and identify automation opportunities.
• Bring automation ideas and rough estimates of hours saved to the Forward Deployed Engineer II and Head of Technology.
• Partner with Data & Analytics on data definitions and data-quality issues found in the field.
• Contribute reusable components to shared libraries.
• Follow engineering standards, including version control, code review, automated testing, and change management.
• Protect borrower data under company security policies and the AI Use Policy, and raise risks early.
• Keep workflow maps, specifications, runbooks, and change logs up to date.
• Provide regular status updates to department leaders and the Head of Technology.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package intended to support health, well-being, and work-life balance.
• Four health plans.
• Two dental plans.
• Health savings account with employer contribution.
• Flexible spending accounts.
• Vision coverage.
• 401(k) plan.
• Other optional benefits.
• Discretionary annual bonus of 15%.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level