Forward Deployed Engineer, Boston

Protex AI•Boston, MA

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

Protex AI is hiring its first Forward Deployed Engineer in its Boston office. The role sits at the intersection of engineering, product, and customers, translating complex operational challenges into AI-powered solutions. The engineer will work directly with enterprise customers, examine their data, and build solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes, using Protex's computer vision infrastructure, enterprise data layer, AI agents, and development tools. Work may include combining computer vision with enterprise data, building AI agents to investigate operational issues, and prototyping capabilities that may become part of the core platform. Solutions developed in the field will inform Protex's product direction. The role requires working from the Boston, MA office under a hybrid policy of two in-office days per week.

Requirements

Several years of experience building and shipping production software.
Deep expertise in either full-stack development or AI engineering, with versatility to work across the stack.
Hands-on experience using AI coding tools such as Codex, Claude Code, or similar to build and ship software faster.
Experience building with LLMs, agents, AI APIs, or modern AI frameworks, and understanding of how to turn AI capabilities into reliable applications.
Comfort working with APIs, SQL, data pipelines, and complex enterprise systems, including unfamiliar or poorly documented environments.
Ability to understand business problems, challenge assumptions, and design pragmatic solutions rather than simply implement requirements.
Confidence communicating directly with technical and non-technical stakeholders, including enterprise IT teams and operational leaders.
Bias for action, strong independent problem-solving skills, and ability to take an ambiguous idea through to working software in days.
Ability to work from the Boston, MA office two days per week under the hybrid policy.

Nice To Haves

Experience in forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or other customer-facing technical roles.
Experience with computer vision, multimodal AI, or vision-language models.
Exposure to manufacturing, logistics, industrial automation, or operational technology.
Experience working in a high-growth startup where speed, adaptability, and ownership matter.

Responsibilities

Work directly with customers to understand operational challenges and translate ambiguous problems into technical solutions.
Own solutions end to end, from technical discovery and rapid prototyping through production deployment and handover.
Build full-stack applications, AI agents, integrations, and workflows on the Protex platform.
Connect enterprise systems and data sources, combining operational context with computer vision.
Validate technical feasibility during pre-sales and build proofs of value where needed.
Build with LLMs, vision-language models, agentic workflows, and modern AI engineering frameworks.
Use AI development tools such as Codex and Claude Code to accelerate development, experimentation, and delivery.
Prototype platform capabilities, test hypotheses against customer data, and turn successful experiments into production solutions.
Make pragmatic architectural decisions that balance speed, reliability, and reusability.
Investigate customer data to uncover inefficiencies, operational risks, and opportunities beyond the original use case.
Work with Solutions Engineering and Customer Success to create additional customer value.
Identify repeatable patterns across deployments and collaborate with Product and Engineering to develop scalable platform capabilities.
Document solutions so they can be maintained, supported, and reused.