Forward Deployed Engineer

We’re seeking a highly technical, customer-facing Forward Deployed Engineer to join an early-stage AI company building infrastructure for enterprise AI agents across complex and highly regulated environments.

This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who enjoys working directly with customers, translating ambiguous business and technical requirements into solutions, and owning implementations from initial discovery through production deployment and iteration.

You’ll serve as the technical owner for enterprise AI implementations, working across areas such as model deployment, infrastructure, evaluations, debugging, and customer-specific integrations.

What You’ll Do

• Own enterprise AI-agent deployments end-to-end, from requirements discovery and technical scoping through implementation, production deployment, evaluation, and iteration.
• Work directly with enterprise customers to understand technical requirements, define success criteria, and design effective solutions.
• Deploy AI infrastructure and open-source models within customer environments.
• Work with Docker, Kubernetes, and GPU infrastructure to support production deployments.
• Build evaluations, benchmarks, and customer-specific success criteria for AI systems.
• Lead technical requirements-gathering and specification sessions with customers.
• Troubleshoot and debug production AI systems across the full deployment stack.
• Manage multiple customer implementations simultaneously while serving as the primary technical owner for each engagement.
• Partner closely with engineering to solve complex deployment challenges and improve the underlying platform.
• Work with customers operating in regulated and complex environments, including healthcare, government, financial services, and large enterprises.

What We’re Looking For

• 0–6 years of experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, deployment engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, customer-facing engineering, or a similar role.
• Strong hands-on engineering skills combined with the ability to confidently lead technical customer conversations.
• Experience deploying, troubleshooting, and supporting production systems.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes in production environments.
• Familiarity with open-source model deployment, AI infrastructure, or agentic AI workflows.
• Strong requirements-gathering and technical scoping skills.
• Ability to independently own a customer problem from initial requirements through deployment and ongoing iteration.
• Comfortable working through ambiguity and solving problems without highly defined requirements.
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple customer engagements simultaneously.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, milestone-driven startup environment.

Nice to Have

• Previous experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer or in a similar deployment-focused role.
• Experience deploying AI agents or agentic workflows.
• Experience with bare-metal GPU infrastructure.
• Experience with open-source model deployment or fine-tuning.
• Experience with enterprise security and compliance requirements.
• Technical consulting experience where you personally scoped and delivered customer engagements.
• Experience at an early-stage startup, founding a company, or running technical/entrepreneurial projects.
• Experience supporting enterprise customers across multiple industries or geographies.

Work Environment

This role is based in San Francisco and requires working onsite five days per week. Candidates should be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate.

This is a high-ownership role within an early-stage environment and is best suited for someone who wants to work closely with customers and engineering, move quickly, and take direct responsibility for getting complex technical deployments into production.

Salary: $100,000–$220,000 Base
Variable Compensation: Milestone-based performance bonuses
Equity: 0.3%–1.5%

Employment Type: Full-Time
Visa Sponsorship: None Available