Forward Deployed Engineer (Physical AI)

Forward Deployed Engineer | Physical AI Location: San Francisco, CA Work model: Full-time, five days per week in office Compensation: $150K to $200K base plus meaningful equity The Company My client is a 10-person, Greylock-backed AI startup building a scientific intelligence platform for the physical world. They work with scientists and engineers across semiconductors, batteries, advanced materials, chemicals, aerospace, and manufacturing. These industries generate enormous amounts of valuable data, but it is often fragmented across spreadsheets, sensor logs, lab notebooks, reports, vendor documents, and experimental systems. The company is building a unified intelligence layer for this information, powering specialized AI agents that help automate difficult workflows such as failure analysis, experimental design, and manufacturing optimization. They have raised a $7M seed round from Greylock and other leading investors. The founders are Harvard computer science graduates with experience at SpaceX, Warp, and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. The broader team includes engineers from Applied Intuition, Glean, Jane Street, Verkada, and Meta. The Role This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who wants to combine software development, AI, product thinking, and direct customer work. You will work firsthand with scientists and engineers in labs, R&D facilities, and manufacturing environments. You will learn how they operate, identify the real problem behind their requests, and build software that improves how physical technologies are researched, tested, and manufactured. You will own projects from initial customer conversations through technical design, implementation, deployment, and iteration. Problems will often be ambiguous, and customers may not know how to translate their scientific needs into software requirements. Responsibilities Work directly with scientists and engineers to understand complex R&D and manufacturing workflowsTranslate ambiguous customer problems into clear technical solutionsBuild AI agents, product features, integrations, internal tools, and data pipelinesConnect fragmented scientific data across lab systems, sensor logs, spreadsheets, reports, literature, and patentsPrototype quickly and iterate based on feedback from real usersOwn deployments from initial discovery through productionTurn successful customer projects into reusable product capabilitiesPartner closely with the founders and the ML, product, and infrastructure teamsTravel to customer sites when needed Ideal Background Approximately 1 to 5 years of professional software engineering experienceStrong software development and problem-solving fundamentalsExperience shipping production backend, full-stack, data, or AI systemsPractical familiarity with LLMs, agents, retrieval systems, multimodal AI, or machine learningStrong communication skills and genuine interest in working directly with customersAbility to operate independently without detailed requirements or structured ticketsInterest in physical industries, scientific research, robotics, hardware, or manufacturingWillingness to work five days per week from the San Francisco officeComfort traveling to customer facilities Relevant Candidate Profiles Strong candidates could come from: Forward deployed or customer-facing engineeringEarly-stage product or backend engineeringApplied AI or machine learning engineeringRobotics, autonomy, aerospace, semiconductors, batteries, or industrial softwareTechnical founder or founding engineer backgroundsComputer science, electrical engineering, physics, materials science, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, or related disciplinesA traditional computer science background is not required. Candidates from physical science or engineering disciplines can be highly compelling if they have strong software-building experience. Technology The current stack includes: RustAWSKubernetesTerraformReactNext.jsFoundation models, AI agents, multimodal systems, retrieval, and scientific data integrationsExperience with every technology is not required. The company values engineers who learn quickly and choose the right tools for the problem. Why Join Apply AI to difficult problems in science, engineering, and manufacturingWork directly with the people developing semiconductors, batteries, materials, and other frontier technologiesOwn meaningful customer and product outcomes from day oneHelp define the Forward Deployed Engineering function at a 10-person companyWork with an exceptionally technical team backed by leading AI and venture investorsReceive meaningful ownership at an early stage