Forward Deployed Software Engineer

Zensho Agency•San Francisco, CA

20h•Onsite

About The Position

A public-safety AI startup is hiring a Forward Deployed Software Engineer to own customer outcomes end-to-end. The company helps law enforcement search evidence and solve crimes by reducing digital evidence overload. Police and prosecutors across the United States use its platform for investigations into homicides, cold cases, and other major offenses. The team has roughly 10 active customer deployments and expects to grow to 25–40 over the next nine months. The role owns customer relationships from pilot through first renewal and expansion. Typical engagements include a 2–6 week pilot, followed by an annual contract and in-agency expansion. Time is split approximately 60% on customer-facing work, 30% building, scripting, and configuring, and 10% internal work such as product feedback, playbook documentation, and hiring loops. This is an engineering-focused customer deployment role, not a sales engineering seat: the engineer works with customer codebases and evidence data, and writes scripts and integrations to make the product work for each agency. The position is full-time and in-person in New York City or the San Francisco Bay Area. Exceptional candidates outside those hubs may be considered, with higher travel expected. The role requires close work with non-technical users in sheriff’s offices and district attorney offices. Visa sponsorship is not available. Candidates must be willing to undergo FBI background checks and CJIS clearance; the team supports the process.

Requirements

4–8 years of experience.
Strong engineering skills and comfort with Python and/or TypeScript.
Experience with APIs and data pipelines.
Ability to ship small tools end-to-end without an engineering handoff.
Genuine customer-facing ability and comfort working in a sheriff’s bullpen or district attorney office, not only over video calls.
Bias to action and comfort with ambiguity.
Owner mindset.
Mission alignment with public safety and U.S. government work.
Willingness to undergo FBI background checks and CJIS clearance; the team supports the process.
Based in New York City or the San Francisco Bay Area; exceptional candidates outside these hubs may be considered with higher travel expected.

Nice To Haves

Prior forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or implementation experience serving non-technology-native customers; defense-tech forward deployed engineering experience is described as a canonical but non-required profile.
Exposure to law enforcement, prosecution, intelligence, defense, or e-discovery/forensics.
Familiarity with evidence formats such as Cellebrite/GrayKey extractions, CDRs, ALPR, body-camera footage, and jail-call audio.
Design sensibility, including the ability to identify poor user experience and explain why.
Prior experience at a defense- or public-safety-adjacent startup.

Responsibilities

Scope pilots with new customer agencies and translate operational goals into technical deployment plans.
Ingest messy evidentiary data for customers, including Cellebrite/GrayKey extractions, CDRs, ALPR, body-camera footage, jail-call audio, PDFs, and social media.
Configure the product for each agency and write scripts or integrations when the product does not fit customer needs.
Work alongside detectives, prosecutors, and analysts as they use the product, and translate workflow gaps into product improvements.
Own customer relationships from pilot through first renewal and expansion.
Feed customer learnings directly into the product roadmap.
Work with the existing forward deployed engineer, technical customer success, and engineering teams.
Provide customer-facing support through calls, onsite work, and asynchronous support.
Document playbooks and contribute product feedback and hiring-loop participation.