Forward Deployed Engineer

This is a Forward Deployed Engineer role weighted more toward commercial work than pure engineering. Most of the job is going deep with enterprise customers: understanding their systems diagnosing real pain points and selling a technical solution that fits. Technical fluency and working knowledge of AI are essential but this role is measured on customer outcomes and closed contracts rather than volume of code shipped.

The role sits at the intersection of engineering product and operations translating ambiguous real-world problems into clear technical plans and making architectural decisions under live customer constraints. It involves close daily collaboration with the founders and with early customers. Reports to the Co-Founder and CEO.

Details

• Location: San Francisco CA US On-site 5 days/week
• Employment: Full-time
• Experience: 2 - 5 years
• Equity: Meaningful early-employee equity
• Visa & work authorization: H-1B O-1 OPT sponsorship available; relocation support offered for candidates outside San Francisco

About the company
A recently launched seed-stage AI startup building the operating layer that makes enterprise AI reliable safe and genuinely usable at scale. Founded in 2025 backed by a strong group of venture investors and angels from leading research labs and financial institutions. The team is small engineering-led and moves quickly while holding a high bar for clarity correctness and maintainability.

What youll own

• Direct relationships with enterprise customers from discovery through technical scoping to closed contract
• Translation of messy ambiguous customer problems into clear technical plans and simple effective solutions
• High-impact architectural and system design decisions made under real customer constraints
• Work across the stack when deployment requires it spanning APIs data layers UI surfaces and customer-facing tooling
• The feedback loop between what enterprise customers need and what the platform becomes in close collaboration with the founders

What were looking for

• 2-5 years of experience in a technical customer-facing role
• General technical fluency and working knowledge of AI systems sufficient to hold credible technical conversations with enterprise buyers
• Exceptional communication skills and demonstrated confidence engaging directly with enterprise customers
• Ability to break down ambiguous messy problems into simple and effective solutions
• Able to work on-site in San Francisco five days per week

Nice to have

• Experience with LLMs retrieval systems knowledge bases or search
• Familiarity with enterprise software such as CRMs ticketing systems and content platforms
• Prior work with large or messy datasets
• Strong intuition for product UX and system design