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/weekEmployment: Full-timeExperience: 2 - 5 yearsEquity: Meaningful early-employee equityVisa & 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 You'll Own Direct relationships with enterprise customers, from discovery through technical scoping to closed contractTranslation of messy, ambiguous customer problems into clear technical plans and simple, effective solutionsHigh-impact architectural and system design decisions made under real customer constraintsWork across the stack when deployment requires it, spanning APIs, data layers, UI surfaces, and customer-facing toolingThe feedback loop between what enterprise customers need and what the platform becomes, in close collaboration with the founders What We're Looking For 2-5 years of experience in a technical, customer-facing roleGeneral technical fluency and working knowledge of AI systems, sufficient to hold credible technical conversations with enterprise buyersExceptional communication skills and demonstrated confidence engaging directly with enterprise customersAbility to break down ambiguous, messy problems into simple and effective solutionsAble to work on-site in San Francisco five days per week Nice to have Experience with LLMs, retrieval systems, knowledge bases, or searchFamiliarity with enterprise software such as CRMs, ticketing systems, and content platformsPrior work with large or messy datasetsStrong intuition for product, UX, and system design