Forward Deployed Engineer

Recruiting From Scratch•San Francisco, NY

8d•Onsite

About The Position

Our client is building an AI-native office platform that automates complex knowledge-work workflows by creating documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and other business outputs using customers’ data, tools, and preferred working styles. The company is an early-stage, well-funded AI startup founded in 2024 with a highly technical team of approximately 12 employees. The team includes alumni from leading technology companies including Apple AI, Microsoft Research, Google, Stripe, and Ramp. The company is building AI systems that can operate across enterprise workflows, integrating with the tools, data, and systems that businesses already use. This is an opportunity to join a small, high-intensity engineering organization where Forward Deployed Engineers operate directly with Fortune 500 customers and have significant influence over both customer deployments and the core product roadmap.

Requirements

2–6 years of experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, AI implementation, Applied AI, Solutions Engineering, or similar enterprise-facing technical roles
Experience working directly with enterprise customers on complex technical implementations
Experience deploying AI, ML, automation, or software systems into real-world business environments
Experience owning technical projects from discovery through deployment
Experience working with Fortune 500 or other large enterprise organizations
Startup experience strongly preferred
Experience operating in highly ambiguous, high-ownership environments
Comfortable working directly with both technical and executive stakeholders
Strong Python engineering experience
Strong understanding of AI/ML systems and modern LLM applications
Experience building or deploying LLM-powered applications
Familiarity with AI agent frameworks and agentic workflows
Strong understanding of APIs and enterprise integrations
Experience building data pipelines and integrating disparate data sources
Experience with cloud infrastructure such as AWS, GCP, or Azure
Experience working with enterprise productivity and collaboration tools
Ability to build custom technical solutions rather than relying solely on existing products
Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals
Ability to troubleshoot technical systems and integrations independently
Comfortable working across Python, TypeScript, or JavaScript
Ability to understand complex enterprise architectures and translate them into practical implementations
Strong customer-facing communication skills
Ability to understand complex business workflows and identify automation opportunities
Comfortable interacting with C-suite executives and senior business stakeholders
Ability to translate business problems into technical architectures
Strong product instincts and customer empathy
Ability to balance customer-specific needs with scalable product solutions
Comfortable owning an entire customer relationship rather than a narrowly defined technical task
Extremely high ownership and accountability
Strong systems-thinking mindset
Comfortable operating with limited structure
High agency and self-direction
Strong problem-solving ability
Excellent written and verbal communication
Comfortable working in fast-moving startup environments
Low-ego and collaborative working style
Able to move quickly while maintaining technical quality
Comfortable traveling and working directly onsite with customers
Strong ability to manage multiple stakeholders and competing priorities

Responsibilities

Own entire enterprise customer accounts end-to-end, from deployment strategy through production scaling
Embed directly with Fortune 500 customers to understand their workflows, business processes, technical environments, and pain points
Work with customers across financial services, private equity, investment banking, insurance, tax and audit, and semiconductor industries
Architect and deploy AI agent systems that solve complex enterprise workflows
Translate ambiguous customer business problems into practical AI-powered solutions
Build custom AI workflows, data integrations, and agent systems tailored to customer requirements
Work within platform constraints while finding creative ways to extend what the platform can accomplish
Develop integrations with enterprise applications, APIs, data sources, and internal business systems
Work closely with customer engineering, operations, product, and executive stakeholders
Manage relationships across the full customer organization, from C-suite executives to end users
Own technical implementation and deployment strategy for strategic enterprise customers
Identify opportunities to expand and scale AI deployments across customer organizations
Feed insights from customer deployments back into the core product and engineering teams
Influence product roadmap decisions based on real-world customer feedback
Collaborate with the founding FDE team and company leadership to define deployment strategy
Help determine staffing requirements, deployment processes, and operating models as the FDE function scales
Develop repeatable deployment patterns and best practices for future enterprise customers
Troubleshoot complex technical and workflow challenges during customer implementations
Operate with extremely high ownership in a fast-moving startup environment
Balance customer-specific requirements with scalable platform-level product thinking

Benefits

Competitive equity package
Opportunity to join an early-stage, well-funded AI company
High ownership over enterprise AI deployments
Direct exposure to Fortune 500 customers
Opportunity to shape the company's emerging Forward Deployed Engineering function
Significant influence over product roadmap and deployment strategy
Work directly with founders and senior leadership
Exposure to advanced LLM, agentic AI, enterprise integration, and automation challenges
High-impact role with significant responsibility from day one

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