Forward Deployed Engineer

U.S. citizenship required. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location: San Francisco, in person; travel to customer sites as needed

Type: Full time

The role ------------

Sainapse runs inside high-stakes customer workflows. Getting from a promising use case to production requires more than configuration: someone has to understand the process, map the systems, build the integrations, prove quality, manage launch risk, and turn what was learned into a better product.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will own that path for strategic customers—from an agreed POC scope through hands-on delivery, evaluation, production launch, and early expansion.

What you’ll do ------------------

• Embed with customer operations and technical teams to understand the real workflow, not only the stated requirements.
• Translate ambiguous needs into architecture, milestones, success metrics, risks, and launch criteria.
• Build and debug integrations across helpdesks, CRMs, ERPs, APIs, identity systems, data stores, and customer infrastructure.
• Configure and extend AI workflows, retrieval, tools, guardrails, and human escalation.
• Execute agreed evaluations and operational readiness plans covering quality, observability, rollback, security, and sign-off. Coordinate UAT, shadow or copilot operation, and a controlled production ramp.
• Communicate clearly with frontline operators, engineering teams, executives, and internal stakeholders.
• Identify repeated customer needs and turn them into reusable code, templates, documentation, and product proposals.

What we look for --------------------

• Production software-engineering ability in Python, TypeScript, or a comparable language.
• Experience with APIs, webhooks, authentication, data mapping, retries, logging, and operational debugging.
• Customer-facing technical delivery experience—or strong evidence you can build trust while staying hands-on.
• Practical knowledge of LLM systems, retrieval, tool use, evaluation, and failure modes.
• Ability to push back when scope is unsafe, make trade-offs explicit, and still keep the deployment moving.
• Willingness to travel when being in the room materially improves the outcome.

What success looks like ---------------------------

Customers reach production with measurable outcomes and trust the system because the launch was rigorous. Each deployment makes the platform easier to deploy the next time.

How you’ll work with the team ---------------------------------

You own execution of scoped POCs, customer integrations, evaluation, deployment, UAT, and controlled production rollout. Solutions Engineering leads pre-sale discovery and POC design. Agree scope, access owners, scoring criteria, dependencies, and the commercial path before delivery begins. Hand operational scope, baselines, known issues, and customer commitments to Customer Success after launch.

About Sainapse ------------------

Sainapse builds agent-first software for customer operations, helping teams resolve work across the systems they already use. Our production work includes customer-support automation and document and order workflows, with configurable levels of autonomy and human review.

We are also building account-intelligence capabilities that connect customer signals across systems. You will help turn hands-on enterprise delivery into more repeatable software, stronger evaluation, and easier deployment.

We are a small team with broad individual ownership. We value first-principles thinking, direct communication, thoughtful use of AI tools, and evidence of customer impact. You will work closely with founders and colleagues across product, engineering, and customer delivery.

Compensation Range: $120K - $140K