Forward Deployed Engineer (Contract to Hire)

ShipBob, Inc.

16h•Remote

About The Position

As a Forward-Deployed Engineer at ShipBob, you'll embed directly within business teams to eliminate manual, repetitive, error-prone workflows. You'll map out how work really happens, identify automation opportunities, and rapidly build end-to-end solutions—from workflow discovery through production deployment. This is an AI-first engineering role where you'll design and deploy agentic workflows using code, APIs, and AI agents. You'll work on everything from micro-automations to large-scale AI-driven solutions, bridging the gap between operations and engineering while maintaining ShipBob's structured engineering principles. This role is ideal for a high-agency engineer who loves being close to real users and thrives in ambiguity. You iterate fast and ship working solutions quickly, with a proven ability to translate modern AI capabilities into meaningful operational outcomes while leveraging AI-assisted coding to operationalize automation at scale. You think like a founder, thrive in ambiguity, and are excited to challenge assumptions to deliver impactful solutions.

Requirements

1-3 years of software engineering experience, ideally in fast-paced SaaS, B2B platform, or high-growth startup environments. Exceptional new graduates with a strong portfolio of AI agents, workflow automation projects, or hackathon wins are encouraged to apply.
Strong full-stack engineering skills, including experience designing APIs and building end-to-end systems.
Demonstrated experience shipping AI-powered or automation-driven features into production, using LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) and translating model outputs into real operational value.
Solid understanding of modern AI/LLM foundations such as, agent architectures and orchestration patterns, embedding models and retrieval pipelines and vector databases.
Hands-on experience with prompt engineering and building systems that combine AI inference with deterministic logic.
Ability to quickly learn operational domains and design lightweight, elegant solutions to real business problems.
Strong bias for action: you move fast, iterate quickly, and are comfortable validating ideas through working prototypes.
Excellent communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally with non-technical stakeholders.
Experience in the following:
SQL or NoSQL databases.
JSON for data interchange.
RESTful API design and integration.
.NET for backend development.
Python for AI/automation scripting.
Frontend fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and modern frameworks like Vue.js or React.
Familiarity with workflow automation platforms such as n8n, Zapier, or similar.

Responsibilities

Embed with operational teams to observe workflows, uncover root causes, and identify where automation and AI agents can meaningfully reduce friction.
Break down complex, manual processes into clean system flows and technical requirements.
Build AI agents and agentic workflows to automate repetitive tasks.
Own the full lifecycle: observe → prototype → validate with domain experts → harden → productionize.
Build reliable systems with logging, retries, monitoring, and guardrails for edge cases.
Collaborate with Product and Engineering when automations interface with core systems; operate independently for everything else.
Validate solutions with domain experts and iterate quickly based on feedback.
Document and publish reusable modules into our Automation Hub that accelerate future automation projects.
Drive fast iteration: ship small, gather feedback, and improve quickly.

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