SDE I - Forward Deployed Engineer

Pine Labs; Dadri; On-site; INR 1,200,000 - 2,400,000; Full time

Job summary

Pine Labs is hiring Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) to work directly with customers, product teams and engineering to turn ambiguous business problems into scalable technical solutions. You will build production-grade backend services, APIs, and AI-powered workflows, and you will design AI agents and agentic systems using LLMs and related frameworks.

Ideal candidates have strong software fundamentals, product thinking, and the ability to work with incomplete requirements while delivering

Qualifications

• 1–3 years of software engineering experience.
• Strong API and backend knowledge.
• Experience with AI/agent frameworks is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with customers, product teams, stakeholders and engineering to translate complex problems into technical solutions.
• Build production-grade applications, backend services, APIs, integrations, and AI-powered workflows.
• Design and develop AI agents and agentic workflows using LLMs, tool/function calling, APIs, RAG, MCP, and emerging AI tech.

Skills

APIs and backend

Distributed systems

Production-grade software

Debugging and troubleshooting

Security and reliability

Observability

Performance optimization

Architectural judgement

Product thinking

Customer-facing collaboration

Tools

OpenAI

Anthropic

Gemini

LangGraph

MCP

Job description

We’re Hiring: Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) | AI, Agentic Systems & Software Engineering

Are you a strong software engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous, real-world business problems and turning them into production-ready technology?

We’re looking for Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) who combine:

Strong software engineering

Product thinking

What You’ll Do

You will:

• Work directly with customers, product teams, business stakeholders, and engineering teams to understand complex problems and translate them into technical solutions.
• Build production-grade applications, backend services, APIs, integrations, and AI-powered workflows.
• Design and develop AI agents and agentic workflows using LLMs, tool/function calling, APIs, RAG, MCP, and emerging AI technologies.
• Integrate solutions with internal platforms and external enterprise systems.
• Rapidly prototype ideas and convert successful prototypes into scalable production systems.
• Debug complex issues across applications, APIs, infrastructure, data, models, and third-party integrations.
• Make pragmatic architectural decisions balancing scalability, reliability, security, latency, cost, and time-to-market.
• Determine when to use deterministic software vs. AI/LLM-based approaches.
• Implement guardrails, authorization, observability, evaluation, and human-in-the-loop mechanisms for AI systems.
• Work effectively with incomplete requirements and evolving customer needs.
• Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Strong Software Engineering Fundamentals

We’re looking for hands‑on experience with:

• APIs, databases, distributed systems, and backend architecture
• Production‑grade applications and services
• Debugging and troubleshooting
• Security, scalability, reliability, observability, and performance
• Quickly understanding unfamiliar codebases, APIs, and systems

AI & Agentic Engineering

Hands‑on experience or strong practical understanding of:

• AI agents & agentic workflows
• Model evaluation & quality measurement
• Model cost, latency & accuracy trade‑offs

Experience with OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, LangGraph, MCP, or similar AI/agent frameworks is highly desirable.

We value engineers who understand when NOT to use an LLM just as much as those who know how to use one.

Experience with some of the following is highly desirable:

What Makes a Strong FDE?

We’re particularly interested in engineers who:

• Are comfortable operating with ambiguity and incomplete requirements.
• Ask the right questions before jumping into implementation.
• Can independently convert a business problem into a working technical solution.
• Are equally comfortable discussing requirements with customers and debugging code with engineers.
• Have strong product judgment and focus on solving the underlying problem - not just implementing requested features.
• Can rapidly learn unfamiliar technologies and systems.
• Prefer building and validating solutions over producing lengthy theoretical designs.
• Take end‑to‑end ownership and remain accountable after the solution reaches production.
• Balance engineering quality with practical delivery timelines.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly and confidently.

1–3 years of software engineering experience for FDE roles.

Additionally:

• Experience taking a product/system from concept or prototype to production
• Experience in fast‑moving product, platform, fintech, SaaS, AI, or enterprise technology environments
• Experience working directly with enterprise customers or business stakeholders is an advantage
• Experience building AI‑powered products or production agentic systems is a strong advantage

The successful candidate should be capable of:

Understanding the problem -> Designing the solution -> Writing the code -> Integrating systems -> Deploying -> Debugging production issues -> Improving the product

The ability to build is fundamental to this role.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal FDE is a combination of:

Strong Software Engineer + Pragmatic Solution Architect + Product Thinker + Customer‑Facing Problem Solver

You should enjoy being given a difficult problem with no obvious solution and being responsible for figuring out:

What needs to be built -> How to build it -> How to deploy it -> How to make it work in the real world.

What You Should Be Comfortable With

Working from the office 5 days a week

Working in a fast‑paced, high‑impact engineering environment

Challenging conventional thinking and driving innovation

Taking end‑to‑end ownership of complex problems

What We Value

You Take the Shot

Make decisions with confidence and execute with speed.

Act like the CEO of your work — taking complete ownership and accountability.

You Craft with Pride

Continuously learn, strive for excellence, and take pride in building secure, scalable, world‑class products.