Forward Deployed Engineer

Stealth Startup; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Stealth Startup in San Francisco, CA is seeking an exceptional Forward Deployed Engineer to bridge software, AI, and customer success. You’ll work directly with customers to understand needs, design tailored solutions, and deploy production-ready systems that deliver measurable impact.

This is a highly technical, hands-on role that thrives in a fast-paced startup environment. You’ll own end-to-end delivery—from discovery and prototyping to integration and deployment—while collaborating with

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience designing, building, and deploying production-grade software.
• Strong understanding of APIs, system integrations, and data pipelines.
• Experience working directly with customers to translate requirements into engineering solutions.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with customers: understand objectives, identify challenges, and translate requirements into actionable engineering solutions.
• Build and deploy production systems: design, develop, test, and deploy software tailored to customer needs.
• Diagnose and solve complex technical problems across APIs, data pipelines, architectures, and existing customer infra.
• Develop AI-powered solutions: apply modern AI tech, including LLMs, to address real business problems.
• Own end-to-end implementation: from discovery through production deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Integrate with customer systems: build robust integrations with third-party APIs and enterprise platforms.
• Operate with urgency and autonomy: make sound technical decisions and deliver in evolving environments.
• Collaborate cross-functionally: work with product, engineering, and leadership to reflect customer insights.
• Translate feedback into product improvements: turn recurring challenges into reusable capabilities.
• Drive measurable outcomes: deliver value through improved workflows, efficiency, and automation.

Skills

Software engineering

APIs & integrations

Customer-facing communication

Problem solving

Job description

We’re looking for an exceptional Forward Deployed Engineer to work at the intersection of software engineering, artificial intelligence, and customer success. In this role, you’ll work directly with customers to understand complex business challenges, design and build tailored technical solutions, and deploy production-ready systems that deliver measurable impact.

This is an opportunity for a highly technical, hands-on engineer who thrives in fast-paced startup environments and enjoys solving problems that don't have predefined answers. You’ll operate across the full development lifecycle—from understanding customer requirements and prototyping solutions to integrating systems, deploying applications, and iterating based on real-world feedback.

The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering fundamentals with excellent communication skills, practical problem-solving ability, and a bias toward action. You should be comfortable navigating ambiguity, working closely with customers and internal engineering teams, and translating complex technical challenges into reliable, scalable solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Work directly with customers: Collaborate with customer stakeholders to understand business objectives, identify technical challenges, and translate requirements into actionable engineering solutions.
• Build and deploy production systems: Design, develop, test, and deploy software applications and integrations tailored to customer needs.
• Solve complex technical problems: Diagnose challenging issues across APIs, data pipelines, application architectures, and existing customer infrastructure.
• Develop AI-powered solutions: Apply modern AI technologies, including large language models (LLMs), to build practical applications that address real-world business problems.
• Own end-to-end implementation: Take solutions from discovery and rapid prototyping through production deployment, monitoring, troubleshooting, and continuous improvement.
• Integrate with customer systems: Build robust integrations with third-party APIs, enterprise platforms, databases, and customer-specific infrastructure.
• Operate with urgency and autonomy: Make sound technical decisions, prioritize effectively, and deliver results in ambiguous, rapidly evolving environments.
• Collaborate cross-functionally: Partner with product, engineering, and leadership teams to communicate customer insights, influence product direction, and improve the platform.
• Translate feedback into product improvements: Identify recurring customer challenges and help turn them into scalable product capabilities rather than one-off solutions.
• Drive measurable outcomes: Ensure deployed solutions deliver tangible business value through improved workflows, increased efficiency, automation, or other customer-defined success metrics.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in a high-growth startup or similarly demanding technical environment.
• Experience designing, building, and deploying production-grade software applications.
• Solid understanding of APIs, system integrations, databases, and modern software architecture.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex technical problems and deliver practical solutions under tight timelines.
• Experience working directly with customers, clients, or cross-functional stakeholders to understand requirements and communicate technical concepts clearly.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate ambiguous requirements with minimal supervision.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical tradeoffs to both technical and nontechnical audiences.
• A high degree of ownership, adaptability, and willingness to work across the full engineering lifecycle.
• Willingness to work full-time on-site in San Francisco, CA.

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Field Engineer, or Customer Engineer in a technically demanding environment.
• Experience working at a top-tier startup known for engineering excellence, rapid execution, and a high talent bar.
• Familiarity with AI/ML systems, LLM APIs, AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or AI application development.
• Experience deploying software into enterprise customer environments and integrating with complex technical infrastructure.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure, as well as containerization and deployment workflows.
• Experience with data engineering, ETL pipelines, SQL, and working with large or complex datasets.
• Experience building prototypes quickly and turning successful experiments into maintainable production systems.
• Comfort balancing hands-on coding with customer discovery, technical presentations, and implementation planning.

What Success Looks Like

• Deliver high-quality technical solutions that solve meaningful customer problems.
• Move quickly from customer discovery to working prototypes and production deployments.
• Build strong relationships with customers by understanding their needs and delivering reliable results.
• Identify opportunities to turn customer-specific implementations into reusable product capabilities.
• Contribute actionable customer feedback that helps shape product and engineering priorities.
• Maintain a high standard of technical quality while executing with speed and ownership.

This is a full-time, on-site position based in San Francisco, CA. You’ll work closely with customers and internal technical teams in a fast-paced startup environment where initiative, engineering excellence, and measurable outcomes are highly valued.