Role Description
Hiring the first Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco for an amazing team!
Quick context:
An AI company rebuilding how insurance claims get handled.
High seven-figure revenue in under a year and still growing fast.
Not naming them publicly; happy to share once we talk.
What the job actually is:
You own customer deployments end to end, from scoping to go-live.
You're the main contact for senior people on the client side, you build and ship the AI agents yourself, and what you learn goes straight back into the product.
There are no FDEs yet. You write the playbook the next ones follow.
Must have:
- 1 to 5 years, with production Python shipped
- Built at a VC-backed startup, as a founder, or at a fast-moving tech company
- You can explain what you built to a non-technical exec and they get it
- Hands-on with LLMs, prompting and agents
- In SF or moving there. Onsite 5 days
- US authorized, supporting H-1B transfers and TN
Nice to have:
- A customer-facing role before, like FDE, solutions engineer, or anything where the client was in the room
- Started something yourself
- You build fast with AI coding tools
Being straight with you on one thing:
This is the first person in a new function at a company growing this fast, and it'll be intense. If you want a settled role with a defined scope, this isn't the one.
$165K to $250K plus equity. Relocation support
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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