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Plastic Labs - Forward Deployed Engineer

$190K - $235K New York, NY, US Mid Posted October 11, 2026

Role Description

Source: Paraform - https://www.paraform.com/share/plastic-labs/cmt95p9s3001m0djrbr4vvj65

Compensation: $190,000-$235,000 base + competitive equity. Relocation support $5K.

Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY (Domino Sugar Factory) - on-site 5 days/week. Visa: not open to any visas (US citizen / Green Card).

About this role

Forward Deployed Engineer with 3+ years of experience to own enterprise customer relationships end-to-end, from pre-sales demos to post-sales integration, for Honcho, Plastic Labs' AI memory and identity infrastructure. First dedicated FDE at a fast-growing neolab (50x developer growth in 3 months) that trains its own models and is the #1 trusted memory provider in the agentic AI ecosystem.

What will you be doing?

  • Manage enterprise deal flow end-to-end: triage inbound, move customers through the pipeline, deliver on commitments
  • Build demos and collateral (slide decks, one-pagers, reference integrations) tailored to each customer's vertical and use case
  • Embed with customers post-sale: audit their codebases and build Honcho integrations directly
  • Educate enterprise customers on agentic engineering mental models and how to leverage Honcho
  • Feed customer friction and insights back to the dev team to improve the product

Tech stack

Python, FastAPI, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL, REST APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, LLMs, Agentic Frameworks

About Plastic Labs

Engineering-driven AI lab (ML + cognitive science) building Honcho, open-source continual-learning infrastructure for AI memory and identity modeling; trains proprietary models for theory-of-mind identity inference. Backed by Long Journey Ventures, Four Rivers Group, Mozilla Ventures, Greycroft, Betaworks, Differential Ventures, Variant. ~15 people, founded 2023, $9M total funding, Brooklyn.

  • 3-5 years with a solid software engineering foundation, ideally moving into customer-facing work
  • Comfortable owning pre-sales demos through post-sales integration
  • Python/FastAPI, TypeScript/JavaScript, SQL, REST APIs; Docker/Kubernetes, AWS/GCP; LLMs and agentic frameworks
  • High-agency autodidact; generalist
  • US citizen or Green Card holder (no visa sponsorship); 5 days in office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

About Forward Deployed Engineering

Forward Deployed Engineers are embedded directly with customers to build custom solutions, integrate products into existing infrastructure, and bridge the gap between product engineering and customer success. The role combines deep technical skills with the ability to operate in client environments and translate business requirements into working software.

Originally pioneered by Palantir, the FDE model has spread across AI, enterprise SaaS, and cloud infrastructure companies. FDEs write production code, architect integrations, train customer teams, and feed product insights back to the core engineering organization. At companies like OpenAI, Salesforce, and Databricks, FDE teams are treated as elite engineering units that can ship custom solutions in days rather than quarters.

Typical FDE stack: Python, TypeScript, SQL, REST/GraphQL APIs, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and increasingly LLM APIs and AI orchestration frameworks. Strong communication and the ability to context-switch between technical and business conversations are as important as coding ability.

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