Cora AI — Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

davidjoseph-co; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive equity

Hybrid work model

Job summary

davidjoseph-co in SF Bay Area is hiring a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer to embed with enterprise customers and drive AI agents from scoping to production. You will own accounts end-to-end and feed learnings back into the product.

You will deploy agents, connect data sources (warehouses, CRM, BigQuery), wire up SSO, build evals, and partner with GTM to close, activate, and expand accounts. Hybrid work with equity on offer in a seed-stage AI startup.

Qualifications

• 2–7 years of experience in full-stack software or forward-deployed engineering.
• Track record shipping AI/LLM features into production in customer environments.
• Direct experience working inside customer environments (forward-deployed or solutions engineering).
• Strong Python (FastAPI) backend and React frontend skills.
• Based in or willing to relocate to the SF Bay Area for hybrid work.

Responsibilities

• Embed with customers to learn onboarding, adoption, and renewals and identify value.
• Deploy and configure agents, connect data sources, and enable production use.
• Build evals against real data to prove agent quality.
• Collaborate with GTM to act as the technical voice in customer conversations.
• Debug deployments, perform root-cause analysis, and improve the platform.
• Own the smallest end-to-end slice that proves value and expand from there.

Skills

Python

FastAPI

React

Forward-deployed engineering

Enterprise deployments

Customer-facing engineering

CI/CD

PostgreSQL

Education

CS or Engineering degree

Tools

PostgreSQL

BigQuery

LLMs

CI/CD

Job description

SF Bay Area, CA · Hybrid · Full-timeCompensation: $180K–$230K base + competitive equity

About the Company

Our client is a seed-stage AI startup rebuilding B2B customer operations around long-running AI agents. Instead of the usual support chatbots or pre-sales tooling, they focus on the messy post-sale lifecycle — onboarding, adoption, QBRs, renewals, and churn — deploying agents that deliver high-touch service at scale. They're backed by well-known venture investors and already have enterprise customers running the product in production.Founded 2025 · small founding team · Industry: AI, B2B, Enterprise

The Role

We're hiring a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer to embed directly with enterprise customers and take our client's AI agents from scoping to production. You'll own accounts end-to-end and feed everything you learn in the field back into the core product — the technical heartbeat of a fast-growing applied-AI team.

What you'll be doing

• Embed with customers to learn how they run onboarding, adoption, and renewals, then identify where the agents drive the most value
• Deploy and configure agents against real customer systems — connecting to data sources (warehouses, CRM, BigQuery), wiring up SSO and integrations, and getting agents into production
• Build evals against real customer data to prove agent quality, and iterate until they clear the bar
• Partner with the go-to-market team as the technical credibility in customer conversations, helping close, activate, and expand accounts
• Debug live deployments, run root-cause analysis, and improve the platform when it gets in the way
• Own the smallest end-to‑end slice that proves value, then expand from there

Tech stack: Python, FastAPI, React, PostgreSQL, LLMs, RAG, BigQuery, CI/CD, agent frameworks

Requirements

• Roughly 2–7 years across full-stack software engineering and/or forward-deployed engineering
• Either a senior profile (about 5–7 years, with a couple of years each in software engineering and in a forward-deployed / customer-facing role at a strong company or startup) or a high-slope earlier-career profile (2–3 years with standout internships, an early promotion track, or founding-engineer experience at a venture-backed startup)
• A track record of shipping AI/LLM features end-to-end into production — real systems, not just prototypes
• Direct experience working inside customer environments (forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or similar)
• Strong Python on the backend (FastAPI) and React on the frontend
• A CS or Engineering degree, or equivalent skill proven by a history of shipping production systems
• Based in, or willing to relocate to, the SF Bay Area for hybrid work

Nice to Haves

• Experience building evals to measure and hill-climb LLM or agent quality
• Familiarity with agent frameworks, RAG, and connecting AI systems to customer data sources and warehouses
• Comfort partnering with go-to-market teams and being the technical voice in the room with customers

Why Join

• A founding role with broad ownership over product and infrastructure, and real architectural influence
• Fast feedback loops, strong promotion potential, and deep hands‑on exposure to applied AI — voice agents, memory systems, knowledge graphs, and agentic workflows
• Competitive base plus meaningful equity at an early‑stage, well‑backed company with genuine enterprise traction

Role Details

• Salary | $180K–$230K
• Equity | Competitive
• On‑site policy | Hybrid, SF Bay Area (~once a month in person; CEO is LA-based, so LA candidates also considered)
• Visa sponsorship | No — US citizens / Green Card holders only
• Employment type | Full-time
• Location | SF Bay Area, CA (also San Francisco, CA and Los Angeles, CA)