Forward Deployed Engineer — Strala

Forward Deployed Engineer — Strala --------------------------------------

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite)

Compensation: $150,000 – $225,000 base + competitive equity

Visa Sponsorship: None available

Experience Level: 2+ years

Employment Type: Full-Time

About Strala

Strala is an AI-native insurtech company rebuilding insurance claims infrastructure through agentic AI automation. The platform automates claims workflows including intake, fraud detection, adjudication support, and settlement operations.

Company traction:

• Multi-seven-figure ARR in under one year
• 50% month-over-month growth
• Series A-stage trajectory with two institutional funding rounds completed
• Backed by Founders Fund with investor exposure to early OpenAI, Cognition, and Scale AI

Team pedigree includes Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford, Optiver, AMD, Palantir, ICPC, and NeurIPS research backgrounds.

About the Role

This is a true technical forward-deployed engineering role with direct product ownership. This is not implementation support. This is not solutions architecture. This is not post-sales integration. This is a hybrid engineering, client deployment, and product feedback role — and the FDE function is still being built with currently only one FDE on the team.

Core ownership includes:

• End-to-end multimodal AI deployment and production agent deployment for enterprise customers
• Direct senior stakeholder ownership, technical scoping, and go-live execution
• API integrations, client systems integration, agent design and iteration
• Prompt engineering, model integration, and rapid AI-assisted prototyping
• Customer-specific feature scoping and product evolution feedback
• Client relationship management and internal FDE playbook creation
• Scaling the FDE function from the ground up

Requirements

• 2+ years combining technical depth and client ownership
• Target backgrounds: forward deployed engineering, agent engineering, growth engineering, founding engineer, or founder
• Technical: Python, APIs, cloud platforms, modern AI/ML tooling, LLM familiarity, prompt engineering, agentic AI concepts, AI-assisted coding workflows
• Strong executive client communication — ability to translate technical systems into business value
• Founder-mode ownership, high urgency, fast execution, and problem ownership
• Willingness to jump between coding and client calls in the same day
• SF onsite commitment

Nice to Have

• Prior FDE experience from elite AI companies — Palantir, Anthropic, OpenAI, Scale, Cognition
• Agent engineering or growth engineering background
• Backend + solutions hybrid background
• ICPC or NeurIPS pedigree
• Founder background

This Role Is NOT For

• Pure solutions engineers without backend depth
• Pure backend engineers without client ownership
• Career FDEs looking for mature structure
• Integration-only profiles

Benefits

• Top quartile salary and equity
• Full relocation support
• All meals covered
• Productivity tooling
• Opportunity to shape company direction

Interview Process

• Application review
• Cultural fit (multiple interviewers)
• First technical interviews
• Second technical interviews
• Final strategy/ops interviews
• Offer

Logistics

• Role is fully onsite in San Francisco — please only apply if you can commit to this
• No visa sponsorship available

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Strala.