Forward Deployed Engineer

Arcade • San Francisco, CA

1d

About The Position

The company is building critical infrastructure to enable AI models to take real actions in the real world, moving beyond chat-only capabilities. They are creating the definitive tools catalog and tool-calling platform, described as "Zapier for AI actions" or "Auth0 for AI," to unlock AI's true potential. The Forward Deployed Engineer role is crucial for inspiring and enabling the world's most sophisticated AI teams. This involves designing and building custom prototypes, Proofs of Concept (PoCs), and reference architectures that demonstrate how the company's infrastructure facilitates real-world AI actions. The role requires staying three steps ahead of the rapidly evolving Agentic AI ecosystem, mastering LLM orchestration, autonomous agent frameworks, and complex tool-calling and action-oriented infrastructure. The engineer will act as a trusted consultant, guiding customers through the transition from passive chat to active, automated intelligence. The company highlights its strong leadership, experienced team, opportune timing in the AI market, massive market potential, and backing by top investors as reasons why this is a significant career opportunity.

Requirements

• 5+ years in a Pre-Sales/Solutions Engineering, Solutions Architecture, or technical consulting role selling highly technical infrastructure (Databases, Security, Integration, or Cloud) or you've mastered an engineering role and are ready to pivot into FDE.
• Deep Integration DNA: You've lived the reality of connecting enterprise systems in any form iPaaS (MuleSoft, Workato, Boomi), ETL/ELT (Informatica, Fivetran, Airbyte), RPA (UiPath, Automation Anywhere), or API gateways and service mesh (Apigee, Kong, Istio).
• Hands-on Technical Chops: You are comfortable with APIs, SDKs, and coding in modern languages (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, etc.).
• Curiosity & Business Acumen: You don't just answer technical questions; you dig deep to understand the "why" and the business impact of a solution. You can explain high-level concepts to an executive buyer without losing the technical plot.
• Evangelist Mindset: You’re a willing presenter, excited to speak at conferences, and interested in creating technical content and blogs to help lead the agentic AI conversation.
• AI-Forward Mindset: You actively use AI in your daily workflows and are eager to master the agentic landscape.
• AI Agent Builder: You've built with LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, or similar — and you've felt firsthand the pain of giving agents real-world capability.
• Backend Engineer: You've shipped production microservices and understand what it takes to run, observe, and scale distributed systems in the real world.
• Identity & Security Practitioner: You have deep fluency in OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, token lifecycles, delegated auth, and the modern identity stack — because agent authorization is one of the hardest problems we solve.
• Infrastructure Engineer: You've lived in Kubernetes, containers, service meshes, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and CI/CD pipelines, and you know how enterprise software actually gets deployed.

Nice To Haves

• Meaningful work in data science, ML engineering, or applied AI/ML.

Responsibilities

• Act as the Technical Authority: Partner with AEs to lead technical discovery and evaluations with Head of AI, CTO, and Architect personas.
• Build the "Art of the Possible": Design and build custom prototypes, PoCs, and reference architectures that show exactly how our infrastructure enables real-world AI actions.
• Simplify the Complex: Take abstract infrastructure, middleware, and API concepts and turn them into clear, value-driven solutions for customers.
• Field-to-Product Loop: Act as the eyes and ears of the market, funneling deep technical feedback back to our Product and Engineering teams to shape the roadmap.
• Empowered to take customer learnings to create working prototypes and systems that can eventually become part of the core platform.
• Drive Technical Wins: Navigate complex technical hurdles in deal cycles ranging from $200K+ to seven figures.
• Master the AI Stack: Stay at the bleeding edge of the ecosystem (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vector DBs) to consult customers on their broader AI strategy.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees