Forward Deployed Engineer

FDE Team; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

FDE Team in San Francisco is hiring Forward Deployed Engineers who blend strong software engineering with direct customer engagement. You will embed with customer teams, understand complex problems, design scalable solutions, and own deployment from discovery to production.

This role emphasizes hands-on engineering—building production-grade systems, APIs, and AI workflows, rather than traditional consulting or pre-sales. Travel is required to work onsite with clients across environments.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience building backend applications, APIs, integrations or full-stack products.
• Ability to scope independently and solve ambiguous technical problems.
• Experience taking software from prototype into production.
• Cloud experience with AWS, Azure or GCP.
• Strong debugging and systems-thinking capabilities.
• Comfortable working directly with technical and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with customers to understand complex technical problems.
• Translate ambiguous requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Build AI applications, integrations, APIs, backend services and automation.
• Develop using Python, TypeScript and other modern technologies.
• Build LLM, RAG and agentic AI workflows where appropriate.
• Integrate with customer APIs, databases, cloud platforms and enterprise systems.
• Work directly within customer engineering environments and workflows.
• Troubleshoot application, integration, data and infrastructure issues.
• Partner with FDE Team engineering pods to turn customer-specific solutions into reusable capabilities.
• Document solutions and support successful knowledge transfer.

Skills

5+ years exp

Backend/APIs/integrations

Scope independently

Prototype to production

Cloud: AWS/Azure/GCP

Debugging & systems thinking

Stakeholder collaboration

Job description

San Francisco, United States | Posted on 09/02/2026

FDE Team builds and deploys Forward Deployed Engineering teams that embed directly into your organization, working inside your systems, your stack, and your workflows from day one. Our engineering pods work across Core Engineering, Sales Ops, Marketing Growth, and Cloud Cost Optimization, helping companies modernize technology, automate operations, and deploy production-ready systems in weeks.

This is an opportunity for engineers who enjoy building from 0→1, solving ambiguous problems, working closely with customers, and shipping production-ready systems in a fast-moving environment.

Backed by SA Technologies, a global technology leader with enterprise delivery expertise across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Department: Client Delivery / AI Engineering

Employment Type: Full-Time

Location: United States

Work Model: OnsiteSan Francisco, California Travel: Customer travel as required

About the Role

FDE Team is hiring Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) who combine strong software engineering skills with the ability to work directly with customers.

As an FDE, you will embed with customer teams, understand complex business and technical problems, design solutions, write production code, integrate systems and own deployment from initial discovery through production.

This is not a traditional consulting, pre-sales or Solutions Architect position . FDEs are hands-on engineers who build and ship.

That distinction is particularly important because it matches FDE Team's public definition of the role: an FDE combines product, engineering and customer-facing work and owns the deployed outcome.

What You'll Do

• Work directly with customers to understand complex technical and operational problems.
• Translate ambiguous requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Build AI applications, integrations, APIs, backend services and automation.
• Develop using Python, TypeScript and other modern technologies.
• Build LLM, RAG and agentic AI workflows where appropriate.
• Integrate with customer APIs, databases, cloud platforms and enterprise systems.
• Work directly within customer engineering environments and workflows.
• Troubleshoot application, integration, data and infrastructure issues.
• Partner with FDE Team engineering pods to turn customer-specific solutions into reusable capabilities.
• Document solutions and support successful knowledge transfer.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Experience building backend applications, APIs, integrations or full-stack products.
• Ability to scope independently and solve ambiguous technical problems.
• Experience taking software from prototype into production.
• Cloud experience with AWS, Azure or GCP.
• Strong debugging and systems-thinking capabilities.
• Comfortable working directly with technical and business stakeholders.

Preferred: Previous Forward Deployed, founding engineer, customer engineering, solutions engineering or startup experience; hands-on AI/LLM development is highly desirable.