Forward Deployed Engineer

Alexander Chapman Ltd; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Alexander Chapman Ltd seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with customers on challenging technical problems at the intersection of AI, software, hardware, and the physical world.

You will own projects end-to-end—from discovery/POC to production—while collaborating across software, AI/ML, infrastructure, and devices. Expect travel and a meaningful equity opportunity as the company scales.

Qualifications

• Experience deploying technical products with customers.
• End-to-end ownership from discovery/POC to production.
• Ability to debug across software, infrastructure, networking, hardware.

Responsibilities

• Deploy complex technical products directly with customers.
• Own projects from initial discovery through production.
• Debug across software, infrastructure, networking, and hardware.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, AI/ML teams and customers.
• Thrive in ambiguous situations without a predefined playbook.

Skills

Customer-facing engineering

Cross-functional collaboration

Problem solving under ambiguity

Production deployment

Tools

DevOps tooling

Embedded systems

Distributed systems

Job description

I’m working with a client, an early-stage AI company building electromagnetic superintelligence at the intersection of AI, software, hardware, and the physical world, and they’re hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with customers on some genuinely difficult technical problems.

This is not a “sit behind a dashboard and configure an API” FDE role.

You’ll be close to the customer, close to the product, and close to the underlying systems — taking ambiguous real-world problems, understanding the environment firsthand, and working across software, AI/ML, infrastructure, devices/hardware, and deployment to make things actually work in production.

The kind of person I’d love to speak with has experience doing things like:

• Deploying complex technical products directly with customers
• Owning projects from initial discovery / POC through production
• Debugging across software, infrastructure, networking, hardware or physical systems
• Working comfortably with engineering, product, AI/ML teams and customers at the same time
• Operating well when the problem is ambiguous and there isn’t already a playbook

Experience from companies like Palantir, robotics/autonomy, defense, industrial AI, hardware/software products, infrastructure, or technically demanding enterprise deployments can translate extremely well.

What makes this particularly interesting is the level of ownership. You’re not being dropped into a massive organization where you own 2% of a system. You’ll have the opportunity to influence how products are deployed, how customer problems shape the roadmap, and how Arena builds its FDE function as the company scales.

The role also involves roughly 20% domestic and international travel, so it’s particularly well suited to people who enjoy being close to the environments where the technology is actually being used.

And because my client is still very early, the equity opportunity is meaningfully different from joining another late-stage AI company after most of the upside has already been priced in.

If YOU are a strong engineer who likes being thrown into difficult situations, working directly with customers, and solving problems that cross the boundary between AI and the physical world, I’d really like to hear from you.

Early-stage / high ownership / meaningful equity