Role Description
Forward Deployed Engineer =============================
Kognitos | Mountain View, CA (Hybrid) — open to remote for the right candidate | Full-time
About Kognitos ------------------
Kognitos is a neurosymbolic agentic AI platform that automates finance, accounts payable, healthcare, and IT workflows in plain English — an approach the company calls “English as Code.” By combining large language models with symbolic reasoning, Kognitos eliminates hallucinations and ensures every automation follows deterministic business logic, with patented conversational exception handling that captures tribal knowledge and turns it into documented enterprise IP. Kognitos is trusted by enterprise customers including PepsiCo and Wipro, and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, with engineering and customer-success teams distributed across North America, Europe, and India.
About the Role ------------------
As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll sit at the intersection of engineering and customer success — embedding directly with enterprise customers to design, build, and ship automations on the Kognitos platform. You'll turn ambiguous, undocumented business processes into working, production-grade automations, often writing code alongside customer teams, and you'll be the feedback loop that shapes our product roadmap based on what you learn in the field.
What You'll Do ------------------
- Partner directly with enterprise customers — finance, AP, healthcare, and IT teams — to scope, design, and implement automations on the Kognitos platform
- Translate ambiguous business requirements and undocumented processes into working “English as Code” automations
- Build custom integrations between Kognitos and customer systems: ERPs, databases, APIs, email, and document sources
- Debug and resolve production issues at customer sites, often under time pressure
- Own the technical relationship with key accounts through onboarding, deployment, and expansion
- Feed field learnings back to product and engineering to improve the platform for every customer
- Travel to customer sites as needed (up to ~25%)
What We're Looking For --------------------------
- 3+ years of experience as a software engineer, solutions engineer, or forward deployed engineer, ideally in a customer-facing technical role
- Strong proficiency in Python and/or another general-purpose language; comfort reading and writing production code
- Experience integrating with enterprise systems (REST/SOAP APIs, databases, ERP or finance systems, or RPA tools)
- Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, fast-moving customer environments
- Excellent communication skills — able to explain technical tradeoffs to both engineers and business stakeholders
- Comfort with occasional travel
Nice to Have ----------------
- Background in enterprise automation, RPA, or workflow orchestration (e.g., UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Camunda)
- Experience with LLMs, NLP, or AI-driven automation
- Prior experience in finance, accounts payable, or healthcare operations
- Startup experience, particularly at a Series A/B stage company
Why Kognitos ----------------
- Ground-floor opportunity at a fast-growing, well-funded AI automation company
- Direct impact on product direction — your fieldwork shapes what gets built next
- Work with category-defining “English as Code” technology
- Collaborative, distributed team across North America, Europe, and India
*Note:* *Location, compensation, and specific requirements are placeholders — update before publishing to match the actual role.*
Final note
You do not need to match all of the listed expectations to apply for this position. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.
Equal opportunities provider
Kognitos is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.
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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