Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer -----------------------------

New York City, NY · San Francisco, CA · On-site (in-hub) · Full-time

Compensation: $115,000–$175,000 + founding-hire equity

About the Company

A Seed-stage public-safety AI startup building tooling that helps law enforcement search evidence and solve crime. Police and prosecutors use the product to accelerate investigations into homicides, cold cases, and other major offenses by cutting through digital evidence overload. Roughly 10 active agency deployments today, with a clear path to 25–40 over the next 9 months across multiple US states.

Founded 2025 · 1–10 people · Industry: Public safety / law enforcement AI · legal & gov-tech

The Role

Own customer outcomes end-to-end: scope pilots, ingest messy evidentiary data, configure the product per-agency, and write scripts and integrations when the product doesn’t quite fit — sitting with detectives and prosecutors while they work cases and feeding learnings straight into the roadmap. Typical engagement runs a 2–6 week pilot annual contract in-agency expansion. Roughly 60% customer-facing, 30% building/scripting/configuring, 10% internal. This is not a sales-engineering seat — you live inside customer codebases and dig through real evidence data.

What you'll be doing

• Scope pilots with new customer agencies and translate operational goals into technical deployment plans
• Ingest messy evidentiary data per customer (Cellebrite/GrayKey extractions, CDRs, ALPRs, body cam, jail call audio, PDFs, social media)
• Configure the product per-agency and write scripts or integrations when it doesn’t quite fit
• Sit with detectives, prosecutors, and analysts while they work, translating workflow gaps into product improvements
• Own customer relationships from pilot through first renewal and expansion
• Feed learnings directly into the product roadmap

Tech stack: Python and/or TypeScript · APIs · data pipelines

Requirements

• Strong engineer: Python and/or TypeScript, APIs, data pipelines
• Customer-facing comfort (sheriff bullpen, DA office)
• Owner mindset, bias to action, ambiguity tolerance
• Mission-aligned with public safety
• FBI background check + CJIS clearance required

Green Flags

• Prior FDE, solutions engineering, or implementation engineering at a company selling into non-tech-native customers. Palantir FDE is the canonical archetype.
• Exposure to law enforcement, prosecution, intelligence, defense, or e-discovery/forensics through past work, military background, or family connection.
• Engineering depth: shipped Python or TypeScript code that processed real data pipelines in production, can ship small tools without an engineering handoff.
• Demonstrated customer-facing track record. Comfortable on agency floors, with detectives or prosecutors, not just on Zoom calls.
• Mission-aligned public safety stance. Treats law enforcement customers as the users they are, not as an ethically loaded case study.

Red Flags

• Frames public safety customers as ethically suspect or as an "interesting case study." Hard exclude per direct guidance.
• Career consultant who has never owned a shipped product outcome
• Sales engineer who treats deployment as a demo and will not dig into the data.
• Pure backend engineer who has never sat across from a customer.
• Job hoppers under 18 months tenure without a clear narrative.

Why Join

• Founding-hire level ownership — meaningful equity, 4-year vest, 1-year cliff
• Own the customer relationship end-to-end, from pilot through first renewal and expansion
• Real public-safety mission with early, growing traction

Details

• Location: New York City, NY · San Francisco, CA
• Work policy: In-hub (NYC or SF Bay Area); exceptional out-of-hub candidates considered with higher travel; 25–75% travel
• Compensation: $115,000–$175,000 + founding-hire equity
• Visa sponsorship: None available
• Employment type: Full-time