Forward Deployed Engineer I

Ascent Developer Solutions • Encino, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Ascent Developer Solutions is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to build software for complex workflows in real estate lending. The engineer embeds with business teams to learn their workflows in detail and builds AI-powered tools alongside them. This is an engineering role involving production code, security review, and post-launch support. The position reports directly to the Head of Technology, and its scope is expected to grow with each delivered project.

The role includes documenting workflows, building and maintaining production automations on the existing platform, collaborating with Platform Engineering and Data & Analytics, and ensuring tools meet engineering, security, and AI governance standards. The engineer measures automation outcomes, trains users, responds to failures, and keeps workflow documentation, specifications, runbooks, and change logs current.

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, in 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 results, and stop or escalate to a person when appropriate.
• Ability to ask good questions before building and explain technical ideas to non-technical colleagues.
• Systems-oriented thinking, including consideration of how workflow changes affect related data, systems, and people.
• Organized, detail-oriented writing skills; workflow maps and specifications are deliverables of the role.

Nice To Haves

• Interest in financial services.
• Exposure to lending, real estate, construction, or accounting.
• Experience with OutSystems or another low-code platform, Microsoft 365/SharePoint, or Jira.
• A 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, using 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, use shared data, integrations, and monitoring, and fit into existing systems.
• Write specifications and acceptance criteria for work intended for the core lending platform and hand them to Platform Engineering.
• Write tests and documentation for each automation and complete code review and security and AI governance review before production release.
• Build with least-privilege agent identities, audit logging, and human review for outputs that affect loan decisions or disbursement of funds.
• Measure time and error rates before and after each automation and report results.
• Train users on new automations, gather 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 to identify automation opportunities.
• Present 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 identified 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 current.
• Provide regular status updates to department leaders and the Head of Technology.

Benefits

• Four health plans.
• Two dental plans.
• Health savings account with employer contribution.
• Flexible spending accounts.
• Vision coverage.
• 401(k) plan.
• Other optional benefits.

What This Job Offers

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