Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer | NYC | $200k–$300k + Equity Most companies hiring Forward Deployed Engineers want you to deploy their software. This company wants you to decide what software should exist. I'm working with a Lightspeed-backed AI company doing something unusual. Rather than selling software into engineering firms, they acquire the firms themselves. Then they embed engineers inside them. You'll sit alongside civil, structural and MEP engineers designing real buildings and infrastructure. You'll understand where their time disappears, decide which problems are actually worth solving, then build and ship the software. No neat backlog waiting for you. No product manager handing you a finished spec. Discovery. Product judgement. Code. Production. Adoption. You own the lot. The problems are real. Engineers are still manually working through calculations, technical documents, drawings, codes and repetitive design workflows that modern AI can increasingly automate. Your job is to work out where software creates genuine leverage, then prove it. They're looking for experienced, product-minded engineers who can build full-stack software, work directly with users and make good decisions without much structure. Production experience with LLMs, RAG, agents or document intelligence matters. Strong FDE experience is relevant, as is having been an early or founding engineer. You don't need an AEC background. $200k-$300k + equity SoHo, NYC | 5 days in office Visa sponsorship available There is a trade-off. Following an acquisition, you'll typically travel Monday to Thursday, 2–3 weeks per month during the first 100 days. You're going there to work alongside the people you're building for. This won't suit everyone. But if the bit of engineering you enjoy most is figuring out what should be built before you build it, I'd like to speak to you.