Forward Deployed Engineer

Workstream; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

Comprehensive health coverage

401K Plan

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Workstream in Menlo Park is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead technical solutions for customers. This hybrid role involves close collaboration with strategic customers and internal teams to deploy high-impact solutions. The ideal candidate has 4+ years in robotics or machine learning, excels in ambiguous environments, and possesses strong problem-solving skills. Workstream offers a competitive salary, equity, and comprehensive health benefits as part of their mission-driven company culture.

Qualifications

• Experience working directly with customers on technical implementations.
• Ability to translate customer problems into technical roadmaps.
• Experience in HR tech, SaaS, payroll, or workforce management platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own technical delivery across customer deployments.
• Embed with customers to understand operational pain points.
• Scope and build custom solutions and integrations.

Skills

Problem-solving skills

Stakeholder management

Technical project delivery

Communication skills

Education

4+ years experience in robotics, computer vision, machine learning, or data science

Tools

APIs

Data pipelines

Workflow automation

Job description

Workstream is a mission-driven company building the all-in-one HR, payroll, and hiring platform for managing the hourly workforce. There are 2.7 billion hourly workers, making up 80% of the global workforce, but this market has been heavily underserved by technology and deserves better. Workstream has been purpose-built for the hourly workforce from day one so that these businesses and their employees can thrive.

Our customers include leading brands from multiple sectors, including Burger King, Carl's Jr./Hardee's, IHOP, KFC, and Culvers. We are a high growth series B company and quickly expanding our product portfolio to deliver on our vision. We are backed by legendary VCs and industry experts like Founders Fund, BOND, and Coatue.

Grow With Us

We are looking for a highly technical, customer-obsessed, and execution-driven Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) to bridge the gap between Workstream’s product platform and our customers’ most complex operational challenges.

In this role, you will operate at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer deployment—embedding deeply with strategic customers to design, build, and deploy high-impact technical solutions that drive measurable business outcomes. You will own end-to-end deployments from discovery and technical scoping through implementation, iteration, and scaled adoption.

This is a high-ownership role for engineers who thrive in ambiguity, move quickly from prototype to production, and want to solve real-world business problems rather than just build in abstraction. You will work directly with customers, internal product and engineering teams, and executive stakeholders to shape deployment strategy while identifying reusable patterns that influence Workstream’s broader platform roadmap. This structure mirrors leading forward-deployed models where engineers embed closely with customers, ship quickly, and feed field insights back into core product development.

This is a full-time, hybrid role requiring presence 3 days a week in our Menlo Park office to foster close collaboration with cross-functional teams.

Day in the Life

• Own technical delivery across strategic customer deployments from initial discovery through production launch and long-term adoption
• Embed closely with enterprise customers to understand workflows, operational pain points, and technical requirements
• Scope, architect, and build custom solutions, integrations, workflows, and product extensions that deliver measurable customer value
• Write production-grade code across backend, frontend, APIs, integrations, or automation layers as needed to accelerate deployment
• Translate ambiguous customer problems into structured technical roadmaps and execution plans
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, and Leadership to align deployments with business priorities
• Make trade-offs between speed, scope, scalability, and productization while protecting customer outcomes
• Identify repeatable deployment patterns and convert one-off customer solutions into scalable product capabilities
• Serve as a strategic technical advisor to customers, helping shape adoption, implementation strategy, and long-term success
• Surface field learnings, customer pain points, and deployment insights back to Workstream’s core product roadmap

Who You Are

• 4+ years of experience in robotics, computer vision, machine learning, data science or model building
• Proven ability to own and deliver complex technical projects in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
• Experience working directly with customers or external stakeholders on technical implementations
• Exceptional problem-solving skills with a bias toward action and first-principles thinking
• Ability to move quickly from prototype to production while maintaining quality
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills across technical and non-technical audiences
• High ownership mindset with pride in end-to-end accountability
• Comfort balancing immediate customer needs with long-term scalable product thinking

Bonus Points

• Experience in HR tech, SaaS, payroll, hiring, or workforce management platforms
• Background in forward deployed engineering, solutions architecture, implementation engineering, or technical consulting
• Experience building integrations, workflow automation, or AI-powered operational tools
• Familiarity with enterprise deployments, APIs, data pipelines, or systems architecture
• Previous experience at high-growth startups, Palantir-style deployment teams, or customer-facing product engineering organizations

Why This Role Is Different

This is not traditional software engineering, sales engineering, or implementation support. Forward Deployed Engineers at Workstream act more like startup operators or technical mini‑GMs for strategic deployments—owning customer outcomes, shipping production systems quickly, and shaping the future product through execution. The best candidates are engineers who want to build, deploy, and influence product direction simultaneously.

What We Offer

• A mission-driven and value-based company dedicated to empower deskless workers and local businesses
• An early employee opportunity at a Series B hyper-growth startup; work with the founding team and industry veterans to accelerate your career
• Competitive salary and equity
• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision. We pay 95% of your premiums for our employees and 85% for dependents
• In office amenities and stocked kitchen
• 401K Plan
• Learning/development stipend
• Flexible PTO

Salary Range

In compliance with the California Pay Transparency Law, the base salary range for this role is between $170k to $200k base in San Francisco. This range is not inclusive of our discretionary bonus or equity package. When determining a candidate’s compensation, we consider a number of factors including skillset, experience, job scope, and current market data.

Workstream provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

We are committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals.