Forward Deployed Engineer

Ikuto; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Hybrid work (New York City)

Job summary

Ikuto in New York is seeking Forward Deployed Engineers to sit between customers and engineering, owning architectural decisions and shipping production software yourself. You’ll meet customers, understand how their business operates, and design solutions that integrate with enterprise systems and data pipelines.

The role is hybrid in NYC, involves working across the stack in an AI-native environment, and focuses on solving real problems for end users with significant customer exposure and

Qualifications

• 3–6 years of software engineering experience.
• Strong CS fundamentals and system-design instincts.
• Experience with Python, TypeScript or Rust is useful.
• Comfortable solving real problems for end users.

Responsibilities

• Meet customers to understand their operations and requirements.
• Architect solutions and own production code end to end.
• Build integrations with complex enterprise systems and data pipelines.
• Ship production software and contribute across the stack.

Skills

CS fundamentals

System design

Distributed systems

Python/TypeScript/Rust

Tools

Python

TypeScript

Rust

Job description

I’m partnering with a fast-growing, venture-backed AI startup in New York that is building autonomous software for one of the largest and most operationally complex areas of the global economy.

They’ve raised $35m+ and are now scaling the engineering team as customer demand accelerates. The business is still small enough that individual engineers have genuine influence over the product, architecture and direction of the company.

They’re hiring Forward Deployed Engineers to sit directly between customers and engineering.

This isn’t a pre-sales role, and it isn’t an implementation role where somebody hands you a specification and asks you to configure it.

You’ll meet customers, understand how their business actually operates, identify what needs solving, architect the solution and then build and ship the production software yourself.

That could mean creating a new AI-powered workflow from scratch, integrating with complex enterprise systems, building backend services and data pipelines, deploying infrastructure, or developing functionality that ultimately finds its way back into the core platform.

Why it’s interesting

The company has deliberately adopted an FDE-led engineering model. Rather than separating engineers into narrow frontend, backend and infrastructure functions, they want generalists who can own problems across the stack.

You’ll spend meaningful time with customers, but remain a proper software engineer: gathering requirements, making architectural decisions and writing production code.

The engineering environment is also highly AI-native. Modern AI development tools are part of the everyday workflow, and you’ll be building real agentic systems solving complex operational problems.

Who could be a great fit?

There isn’t one perfect background. We’re particularly interested in a few different archetypes:

The Startup Generalist

You’ve been an engineer at a strong Seed–Series B startup, worked across the stack and are comfortable figuring things out without a perfectly defined specification.

The Big Tech → Startup Engineer

You’ve had excellent engineering training at a recognised technology company but want more ownership, customer exposure and the pace of an earlier-stage environment. A combination of Big Tech and startup experience is particularly interesting.

The Existing FDE / Customer-Facing SWE

You already work directly with customers, scope technical problems and then build the software required to solve them.

The B2B Product Engineer

You may not have “FDE” in your title, but you’ve built integrations, internal tools, workflow software or customer-specific functionality and are comfortable owning delivery from discovery through production.

The AI-Native Engineer

Perhaps your current company isn't AI-first, but you are. You use AI development tools heavily, have experimented with agents or AI applications yourself, and actively want your next role to be closer to applied AI.

What we’re looking for

Typically 3–6 years of software engineering experience, with strong CS fundamentals and good system-design instincts.

You should be comfortable taking an ambiguous problem, challenging assumptions, deciding what needs to be built and then actually building it.

Experience with Python, TypeScript or Rust is useful, but engineering quality and fundamentals matter considerably more than matching an exact technology checklist.

Most importantly, you need to enjoy solving real problems for end users. This probably isn't the right environment if you want to work on one narrow technical area with requirements handed down to you.

New York City – hybrid

$180k–$220k base + equity

AI-native engineering environment

Early-stage, heavily funded and scaling