Role Description
Forward Deploy AI Engineer | Lightspeed-Backed AI Startup | SF | Up to $400K
Most AI engineers build in isolation. This role puts you inside customer production systems on day one.
My client is a Lightspeed-backed startup building infrastructure for Agent Behavior Monitoring — helping hundreds of teams understand exactly how their autonomous agents behave post-deployment. $30M raised in the last 5 months. Under 20 people. Everyone is either an ex-founder or founder to be. They ship at a pace most companies never reach.
They are hiring a Forward Deploy AI Engineer to embed their platform directly into customer codebases, own integrations end to end, diagnose real agent failures in live environments, and drive long-term adoption. Half deep engineering. Half customer ownership.
If your background includes forward deployed or solutions engineering at a company like Palantir, Databricks, Datadog, Cognition, Decagon, Sierra, Cursor, Anyscale, Ramp, Retool, Figma, Notion, or similar high signal B2B tech companies — this was written for you.
Role Requirements:
- 3 to 7+ years of engineering experience
- Production agent or applied AI engineering experience — non-negotiable
- Prior forward deployed, solutions architect, or solutions engineering experience at a B2B tech company
- Strong technical background — coding competitions, research experience, or equivalent signal
- Strong customer facing communication skills — you explain complex systems clearly to both engineers and executives
- Comfort deploying LLM or agent systems into real production environments
- Prior evals, observability, or behavior monitoring experience is strongly preferred
- High touch, solutions oriented work style — you own customer outcomes not just tickets
- Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco
- 5 days in person
- Wants to be a technical founder eventually
- H-1B, O-1, and OPT considered for exceptional candidates
Compensation and Benefits:
- Junior 3 years: $200,000
- Mid 3 to 5 years: $300,000 to $350,000
- Senior 5 to 7 years: $400,000
- Plus equity
- Private chef in office
- Equinox membership
- Full benefits package
- In-person, San Francisco
Email [email protected]
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Pay: From $200,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Dental insurance
- Paid time off
- Parental leave
Work Location: In person
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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