Forward Deployed Engineer (Ayama)

career; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Ayama is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer in San Francisco, CA. You'll be the technical face at customer sites, engaging with clients to ensure successful deployments and configurations. Daily fluency in Python and strong SQL skills are essential, along with 5+ years of software engineering experience. The role requires hands-on problem-solving and structured communication, as you'll work closely with customer IT teams. This full-time hybrid position involves some travel to client sites in the Western US.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Ability to debug production issues from code you didn't write.
• Comfort in writing clear bug reports and explaining technical issues.

Responsibilities

• Own customer deployments end-to-end at the technical working level.
• Configure Ayama for new customers including enterprise system integrations.
• Translate field reality into structured product feedback for engineering.

Skills

Python fluency

Strong SQL

Customer-facing engineering

Cloud experience

Structured communication

Job description

Ayama has partnered with Andrew Ng's AI Fund and a Fortune 500 energy leader to use AI to reshape how $10+ Trillion of heavy assets operate, are managed, and are maintained. With electrification driving rapid growth in energy and reshoring accelerating the build out of U.S. electronics and IT manufacturing, the company plans to close critical gaps by raising asset uptime & output as well as staff productivity. Ayama is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer to be the technical face of Ayama at our customers.

The Forward Deployed Engineer is customer-facing every day. You work with customer end users and customer IT teams primarily remotely, with periodic on-site visits to customer operational sites for deeper engagement, training, and incident response. This is a 100% hands-on role split between customer engagement and code. You write Python and SQL daily, debug across systems you didn't build, configure Ayama for each customer's operational reality, and translate field observations back into product decisions.

This is a full-time hybrid role located in the Bay Area. Additional locations will be considered in the Western US as long as you live within 30 miles of a major airport with daily flights to San Francisco. Some travel to customer sites will be required. There is no relocation package budgeted for this role.

Responsibilities for the Role Include:

• Own customer deployments end-to-end at the technical working level: daily operations, training, configuration, incident triage
• Configure Ayama for new customers: enterprise system integrations, operational data mappings, asset hierarchy, customer-specific workflows
• Debug customer-affecting issues end-to-end: read logs, trace through pipelines, patch in production, file precise root-cause reports for engineering
• Scope and execute pilot deployments as Ayama brings on new customers
• Translate field reality into structured product feedback that engineering can act on directly
• Build customer-specific scripts, integration adapters, and small tools that don't belong in core product code

Requirements For the Role Include:

• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience
• Daily Python fluency (Django/FastAPI preferred, transferable from Flask or other modern Python frameworks)
• Strong SQL: joins, aggregations, window functions, and reading query plans
• Track record of customer-facing engineering: deployments, integrations, or incident response with customers in the room
• Comfort debugging production issues in code you didn't write
• Direct, structured communication: you can write a clear bug report and explain a technical issue to a non-engineer
• Cloud experience (GCP preferred) and at least one shipped integration with an enterprise system (ERP, CRM, CMMS, or similar)

Nice To Haves Include:

• Prior Forward Deployed Engineer, Implementation Engineer, or Solutions Engineer experience at enterprise or B2B SaaS companies
• ERP / CMMS integration experience
• Industrial or operations domain background: heavy assets, telemetry, asset management
• Background in a physical-engineering discipline (mechanical, electrical, industrial)

Why Join Ayama:

• Exclusive Ecosystem: Unparalleled access to AI Fund's experts and Dr. Andrew Ng's network of AI luminaries.
• Real-World Impact: We are solving critical performance gaps in energy supply while demand driven by global electrification skyrockets.
• Growth Path: First role on what will become Ayama's customer engineering function. Lead and hire that team as the company scales.

The compensation package will include a base salary plus equity along with a full-benefits package.