Forward Deployed Engineer

Location: New York, NY / San Francisco, CA
Company Stage of Funding: Pre-Series A / Early Growth
Office Type: On-site — Bi-coastal; high preference for New York, San Francisco also available
Salary: $160,000 – $220,000 + Competitive Equity
Visa: Open to visa transfers (OPT, H1B transfers)
Travel: Up to 50% travel expected for candidates based on the opposite coast from customers

Company Description

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.

What You Will Do

• 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

Ideal Candidate Background

Experience 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

Technical Requirements

• 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

Customer & Business Requirements

• 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

Soft Skills

• 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

Compensation & Benefits

• Base salary: $160,000 – $220,000
• Competitive equity package
• Equity varies based on seniority and founding FDE designation
• 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

Why Join

This is an opportunity to join an early-stage AI company at a critical point in its growth and help define how enterprise AI deployments are executed.

You’ll work directly with Fortune 500 customers, solving complex business problems through AI agents, custom workflows, data integrations, and enterprise automation.

The role combines engineering, product, customer strategy, and business problem-solving rather than focusing exclusively on traditional software development.

If you enjoy being close to customers, building AI systems in real-world environments, solving ambiguous problems, and having significant ownership over both technical deployments and product direction, this role offers exceptional scope and impact.