AI Forward Deployed Engineer

ISL Talent; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 70,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Direct founder access

Hands-on onboarding with founders

Clear career path to Senior FDE

Job summary

ISL Talent in Central London is recruiting a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with real clients, building and deploying AI agents that solve real invoicing and payments problems.

You’ll own delivery early on, join client workshops, and grow into leadership as the team scales, with hands-on onboarding from the founders. This is an office-based role five days a week, with equity and a clear path forward.

Qualifications

• Strong Python experience as core in agents.
• Curiosity about how far to push AI coding.
• Early-career software or ML engineer with production code experience.
• Interest in building with AI, including side projects.
• Comfort with ambiguity and taking initiative.
• Ability to explain technical work to finance teams or clients.

Responsibilities

• Maintain and improve agents already live with clients, fixing bugs and incorporating feedback.
• Get under the hood of the stack: Python, GCP, Temporal, and OpenAI Agents SDK.
• Own delivery and enhancement work independently as you gain trust.

Skills

Python

ML engineer

AI enthusiasm

Ambiguity tolerance

Communication to non-engineers

Commercial mindset

Tools

OpenAI Agents SDK

Temporal

Google Cloud Platform

Job description

Central London · Full-time, office-based

Most “AI agent” roles right now are a slide deck and a vague vision. This one gives you real clients, real financial processes, and real decisions to make from day one.

About Trubrics

We’re working with Trubrics, who build AI agents that solve real problems for real estate finance teams - automating the invoicing and payments work that currently eats up their time. They’re backed by Pi Labs, live with enterprise clients already, and growing fast.

They didn’t start here. They began by building tools to help companies evaluate their own machine learning models, before repositioning hard into agentic AI for real estate finance. That pivot is working, and they need two more people to help them build on it.

How they work

They care most about ownership - even their most junior people are expected to take real responsibility for their work, not wait to be told what to do. Beyond that, they’re not into corporate performance, so come as you are. They’re collaborative and straightforward with each other, and they expect the same back.

They prioritise by what actually moves the needle for clients, not what looks good on a roadmap - every pilot they’ve run so far has converted into a paying deployment, which says a lot about how they operate.

The role

You’ll be their second or third Forward Deployed Engineer, joining their first FDE hire, who’s been doing this since earlier this year and can show you the ropes.

This isn’t a role behind a product team, shipping features into a queue. You’ll be embedded with real clients, building and deploying agents that solve their actual invoicing and payments problems, and staying close enough to see whether what you’ve built actually holds up in practice.

Early on, that looks like:

• Maintaining and improving agents already live with clients - fixing bugs, incorporating feedback, learning how the systems actually get used
• Getting properly under the hood of their stack: Python, GCP, Temporal for workflow orchestration, and the OpenAI Agents SDK across OpenAI and Anthropic models

As you build trust and experience, that grows into:

• Owning delivery and enhancement work independently
• Sitting in client workshops and leading implementation conversations
• Eventually running full engagements for new clients from scratch - discovery, scoping, design, deployment

What they’re looking for

• Strong Python experience - non-negotiable, since that’s what their agents are built in
• Demonstrated curiosity of how far to push AI coding - you are constantly asking yourself how much dev you should delegate to Claude Code
• Solid early-career experience as a software or ML engineer - you’ve already shipped real, production code, even if you’re not chasing a senior title yet
• Real, demonstrable interest in building with AI - side projects and self-directed learning count, you don’t need professional agentic AI experience
• Comfort with ambiguity - they don’t have every process defined yet, and they’re not looking for someone who needs that before they can act
• The ability to explain what you’re building to people who aren’t engineers - their clients are finance teams, not developers
• Genuine curiosity about the commercial side of what you’re building, not just the technical challenge

You don’t need to have worked at an AI-native company before. That’s exactly the kind of profile that’s worked well for them already, and it’s who they’re looking for again. But if you have got that experience and you’re still keen, they’d love to hear from you too!

What you don’t need

• A real estate, finance-ops or ERP background - they’ll teach you what matters

What’s on offer

• £60,000–£70,000 depending on experience, plus equity - a Share Option Pool is already in place
• Direct, hands-on time with both founders - Joel on the commercial side, Jeff on the technical side - through onboarding and beyond
• A real say in how things get done. You’d be hire two or three at a company about to reach six people - a lot of “how they work” is still being shaped
• A genuine path forward - strong performers can expect to grow into Senior FDE, and beyond that, into leadership as the team scales

Worth knowing before you apply

They work from their office near Tottenham Court Road, typically five days a week, with occasional flexibility when it’s needed. If you’re looking for a remote-first or hybrid-first role, this isn’t it. They think being in the room together, especially at this stage, is part of how they build well. Better you know that now than three interviews in.

On process: it starts with a conversation with Jake at ISL Talent, then a 30-minute conversation each with Joel and Jeff, followed by a paid, in-person working half-day - real project work, so you get a genuine feel for the role before anything’s decided.

They move quickly once someone’s the right fit - typically a matter of weeks, not months, from a strong first conversation to an offer.