Forward Deployed Engineer

Loop • Chicago, IL

10h • Hybrid

About The Position

Loop is the data platform for the global supply chain. Logistics runs on messy, unstructured data -- trapped in PDFs, emails, and legacy systems. We use AI to structure this chaos, creating a "source of truth" that automates payments and audits for the Fortune 100. We are building the financial nervous system for a $100 trillion physical economy. Our technology ensures freight moves efficiently and carriers get paid instantly. Backed by Founders Fund, Index Ventures, and 8VC, we are scaling rapidly. We are building a Forward Deployed Engineering function to take Loop's AI directly to the front lines -- embedding with customers, proving what's possible, and pulling an entire industry into a new era. The gap between what logistics runs on today and what's now possible with AI is enormous. FDE exists to close it.

About You
Loop is bringing AI to an industry that still runs on PDFs, phone calls, and tribal knowledge. You are the one who lands first. You are 75% engineer, 25% product-founder mind. You write production code and navigate legacy systems with equal confidence, but you also hear customers with a commercial ear and translate what you learn into buildable requirements. You have real integration experience with enterprise customer systems -- not just willingness, but instincts built through reps.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will operate at the edge of the company -- embedded with customers, learning their operations, and building working solutions that drive client results and feed Loop's product direction. The work is founder-like: you own the problem end-to-end, from commercial discovery through technical delivery. This is not professional services and not sales engineering. This is an engineering role that reports to engineering, with the autonomy to shape how an early-stage function operates.

You will be one of the first hires on this team. The problems are not perfectly defined, the playbook does not exist yet, and you will help write it. The function is led by a former founder, and the role is designed as a training ground for people who want to build and lead their own thing someday -- whether that is a company, a product, or a team. If you want to be the person who walks into an unfamiliar problem, figures it out, and builds something real -- keep reading.

Requirements

• 3-5 years of software engineering experience.
• Hands-on integration experience with enterprise customer systems -- ERPs, TMS platforms, EDI feeds, payment systems, or comparable legacy environments. This is hard to substitute with aptitude alone.
• Technically bilingual: writes code that meets a top-tier engineering bar, and equally comfortable navigating legacy systems built on decades-old principles.
• Experience working at early-stage or high-growth companies where you shipped end-to-end and wore many hats.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, customer-facing environments with minimal oversight.
• Strong communication skills -- able to translate between technical constraints and business language, equally effective with operators and executives.
• Willing to work in the San Francisco office. This role involves customer site visits and in-person collaboration with the team.

Nice To Haves

• Experience owning a full-cycle customer deployment end-to-end -- from understanding the problem through shipping a working V1 against the customer's actual systems. This is the core FDE muscle regardless of what the role was called. Equivalent backgrounds include: Forward Deployed Engineers, implementation engineers at vertical SaaS companies, technical founders who did their own customer deployments, field engineers at developer infrastructure companies in their early growth stage, or applied AI engineers deploying models into enterprise workflows.
• Domain experience in supply chain, logistics, freight, or transportation.
• Founder experience or experience leading technical initiatives from zero.

Responsibilities

• Qualify opportunities and lead technical discovery -- map the customer's systems landscape, assess technical fit, and produce a scoped project plan.
• Embed with customers to build and ship working solutions -- show early work, iterate on feedback, and converge on a working v1. Leverage Loop's platform primitives where they fit; build from scratch where they don't. The objective is speed to client results, not generalized solutions.
• Integrate customer systems with Loop -- APIs, EDI feeds, ERPs, TMS platforms, payment systems. Wrangle the messy data underneath.
• Own customer relationships and deployment timelines -- run meetings, demos, and status updates from kickoff through commercial conversion. Travel to customer sites as needed.
• Debrief every deployment -- extract repeating patterns, identify productization candidates, and route field intelligence back into Loop's product direction.
• Help build the function itself -- refine qualification criteria, improve processes, and contribute to the team's playbook as we learn from the field.

Benefits

• Premium Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance plans
• Insurance premiums covered 100% for you
• Unlimited PTO
• Fireside chats with industry leading keynote speakers
• Generous professional development budget to feed your curiosity
• Physical and Mental fitness subsidies for yoga, meditation, gym, or ski memberships

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed