Forward Deployed Engineer

Underdog.io -Apply to top tech jobs in 60 seconds. A place where companies apply to you; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully-covered healthcare

Unlimited PTO

In-person NYC office

Job summary

Underdog.io, based in New York, is seeking a Forward-deployed Engineer to blend engineering with customer success. You will lead technical onboarding, define integration approaches, and build reusable platform capabilities by connecting customer systems to our AI-powered platform.

You will work directly with customers and partners, designing and delivering data onboarding, configuration, and scalable integrations that drive value.

Qualifications

• 4+ years in software engineering with integrations or platform focus.
• Strong experience building and maintaining production integrations.
• Comfort onboarding customers and translating requirements into technical solutions.
• Ability to work across customer and partner teams.

Responsibilities

• Own customer outcomes end-to-end, embedding with customers and ensuring measurable value.
• Lead technical discovery, solution design, and delivery for deployments.
• Design, build, and maintain integrations with external partners.
• Collaborate with customers' technical teams to scope requirements and troubleshoot.
• Prototype and ship quickly to unblock deployments.
• Translate field observations into product feedback.

Skills

TypeScript/Node.js

APIs (REST/GraphQL)

SQL & Databases

Data pipelines

Integrations with third-party systems

Job description

About the Company

Our hiring partner is building the first agentic AI platform designed to power multi-unit franchise success, covering the entire journey from brand discovery to portfolio management. They serve three core customer groups: prospective franchisees seeking the right opportunities, current operators automating workflows and uncovering critical insights, and established brands connecting with a qualified pipeline of ambitious partners.

Franchising is a massive, trillion-dollar industry with over 800,000 locations across the U.S. and a rapidly expanding international footprint. Multi-unit operators now control more than half of all franchise locations, yet the infrastructure required to build and scale these portfolios remains fragmented and outdated. Backed by leading investors and industry experts, this team is modernizing the ecosystem and unlocking its full potential.

About the Role

This company is seeking a Forward-deployed Engineer to operate at the intersection of engineering and customer success—building the technical integrations and customizations that ensure customers derive maximum impact from the platform and its AI agents.

This is not a traditional engineering role. This individual will work directly with customers to understand their existing systems, scope integration approaches, and define the agentic capabilities that make the platform valuable across the franchise ecosystem. Success in this role requires equal comfort jumping on a call with a customer's technical team and writing production code.

Examples of projects this engineer might work on include:

• Leading technical onboarding for new brand partners by connecting their existing data, CRMs, and messaging systems to the platform, enabling them to identify high-fit franchisees and run their franchise development operations end-to-end.
• Developing structured, repeatable integration layers that pull accounting, payments, and employee systems into the platform, powering portfolio management for multi-unit operators.
• Extending the agent infrastructure to support customer‑specific workflows, turning one‑off customizations into reusable platform capabilities as patterns emerge.

What You'll Do

• Own customer outcomes end-to-end—embed with customers (including onsite where needed), understand their workflows and what success looks like in the real world, and ensure the platform delivers significant, measurable value.
• Lead technical discovery, solution design, and delivery for high‑impact customer deployments, including data onboarding, workflow configuration, and identifying new capabilities that can drive incremental customer value.
• Design, build, and maintain integrations with external partners across the franchise ecosystem.
• Work directly with customers' and partners' technical teams to scope requirements, troubleshoot issues, and ensure reliable data exchange.
• Partner with the go‑to‑market team to evaluate new partnership opportunities from a technical feasibility standpoint.
• Build internal tooling and infrastructure that makes customer and partner onboarding faster and more repeatable—transforming bespoke customer solutions into reusable platform capabilities when patterns emerge.
• Move quickly to prototype and ship whatever is needed to unblock a customer deployment or commercial deal.
• Translate field observations into product insight, serving as one of the team's best sources of feedback on what to build next.

Who You Are

• Possesses 4+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful exposure to integrations, APIs, or platform engineering.
• Demonstrates strong technical skills across the stack, including comfort with TypeScript or Node.js, APIs (REST and GraphQL), SQL, databases, data pipelines, and command‑line tooling.
• Has experience building and maintaining integrations with third‑party systems in production environments.
• Is comfortable owning the full lifecycle: discovery, design, build, deploy, operate, and iterate.
• Brings a customer and partner‑facing mindset with the ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Is resourceful and scrappy, figuring out how to work with messy, underdocumented partner APIs and imperfect data to make things work.
• Embraces a high‑ownership mindset, driving every customer outcome and partner integration through to completion and holding oneself accountable to a high standard.
• Is naturally curious and ambitious, with a passion for going deep on new customer workflows and partner systems, and turning messy integration work into reliable infrastructure.
• Has a strong bias for action, shipping and iterating quickly without waiting for perfect specifications or complete information.
• Is fully "AI-native," leveraging AI coding tools to amplify personal velocity and impact. This individual is eager to work in an environment where AI is a core pillar of both the product and internal operations, even if their current company does not fully embrace it.
• Prior experience in forward‑deployed, solutions engineering, implementation, or technical consulting roles is a plus.
• Prior experience in a startup or early‑stage environment is a plus.
• An interest in franchising and the local business landscape is also a plus.

Why Join the Team

• Meaningful Impact: Play a direct role in supporting local communities by empowering individual operators and elevating great franchise brands.
• Ownership & Responsibility: Own significant pieces of the business and have a direct influence on the company's strategic direction.
• AI-Native Culture: Be part of a team that is actively pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, both in their product and their internal workflows.
• Benefits: Enjoy comprehensive benefits including fully‑covered healthcare options and unlimited PTO.
• In‑Person Team: Collaborate daily with the founding team in a dynamic New York City office environment.