Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

About the Role

This is a founding-level, customer-facing engineering role at a Series A AI compliance SaaS company serving enterprise brands in regulated industries such as CPG, healthcare, and FMCG. The platform automates the review of marketing and packaging materials against brand guidelines and market regulations — turning multi-week approval cycles into hours using purpose-built AI agents.

The company has real, live enterprise customers and is firmly in the scaling phase. This role sits at the center of customer trust, deal velocity, and product direction. You will work directly alongside the founding team in active enterprise cycles, and what you learn in the field will shape what gets built next.

What You'll Do

• Customer discovery. Go on-site with enterprise customers, run discovery sessions, and surface unmet needs — not just stated ones. Distinguish between what customers say they need and what's actually driving their pain.
• POC execution. Configure and ship against real customer workflows. Write code, build integrations, and help customers realize value quickly — typically within the same week.
• Product signal. Bring field learnings back to engineering in an actionable form. Identify patterns across customers, translate feedback into product requirements, and influence roadmap prioritization.
• Stakeholder credibility. Build trust across engineering, design, sales, and customer leadership without direct authority. Communicate clearly at every level — from hands-on technical teams to executive stakeholders.
• Product partnership. Work closely with founders, product, and engineering to shape roadmap decisions, bring structure to ambiguity, and ensure what's being built aligns with real customer needs.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 7+ years of professional experience in engineering, forward deployed engineering, or a closely related technical role
• Minimum 2 years average tenure across roles with a clear track record of career progression
• Startup experience (early-stage preferred) — strong candidates with CPG or regulated-industry enterprise background are also considered
• Proven ability to conduct customer discovery and translate findings into shipped engineering or product deliverables within tight timelines
• Comfortable writing code and picking up whatever the role requires — this is a builder's role with a customer-facing edge
• Strong cross-functional collaboration and executive communication skills (CEO, customers, product, engineering)
• Ability to be on-site in San Francisco 3× per week, with willingness to travel to customer sites as needed
• Must be legally eligible to work in the United States — visa sponsorship is not available

Nice to Have

• Experience in regulated industries (healthcare, CPG, FMCG, legal/compliance)
• Background at enterprise software companies (e.g. Salesforce, Microsoft) or Big 4 / professional services with a technical focus
• Familiarity with integrations across tools like Asana, Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, or Microsoft 365
• Prior 0 1 product-building experience where you shaped both what was built and how

Compensation & Benefits

• Base salary: $180,000 – $210,000 USD annually
• Equity participation (founding-level hire)
• Hybrid work arrangement with WFH flexibility outside of required on-site days

Location

Based in San Francisco, CA. Hybrid role requiring on-site presence 3 days per week. Some travel to enterprise customer sites expected.