Forward deployed engineer

Altara; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Altara is building the scientific intelligence platform for the physical world and partnering with scientists to move breakthroughs from R&D to manufacturing. We sit with customers to understand their workflows, teach them how to use a brand-new technology, and guide pilots toward measurable outcomes.

We value deep scientific fluency, a high energy customer-facing attitude, and the patience to teach and support teams as they adopt AI-powered solutions.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot data integrations and build lightweight customer-ready solutions.
• Experience communicating complex scientific concepts to non-experts.
• Ability to identify and prioritize high-value workflows for early impact.

Responsibilities

• Learn how scientists currently work and their tools, data, and constraints.
• Identify high-value workflows where Altara can make an immediate difference.
• Lead pilots toward measurable outcomes and accelerate customer wins.
• Configure the product, troubleshoot issues, and prototype simple solutions with customers.
• Teach users to integrate Altara into daily workflows and grow champions.
• Capture recurring insights to inform product and engineering roadmaps.

Skills

Technical depth

Discovery skills

Product judgment

Social stamina

Teaching patience

Travel readiness

Scientific fluency

Education

Science/engineering degree

Job description

We’re building the scientific intelligence platform for the physical world, to accelerate breakthroughs in semiconductors, batteries, advanced materials, aerospace, and beyond. These industries represent trillions in spend, but are still trapped in outdated software. We’re changing that by building the intelligence layer to help scientists and engineers move faster and solve core problems -- R&D through manufacturing.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a category-defining company at the intersection of AI and the physical sciences. And we’re building a world-class team to do it.

We recently raised a seed round led by Greylock, with participation from Neo, BoxGroup, Liquid 2, and top angels including Jeff Dean + leadership at OpenAI and AMD. Our team (ex-Applied Intuition, Glean, SpaceX, Warp, Jane Street, Verkada) works in-person in San Francisco. Our office is located walking distance from 4th and King Caltrain station.

The Role:

Altara’s product can create significant value, but adoption requires someone to sit with scientists, understand how they work, earn their trust, identify the right workflow, and guide them toward a measurable outcome. We’re looking for someone that combines the technical skills to troubleshoot issues and build lightweight solutions for customers with the social stamina and patience to teach them how to use a brand new technology.

What you’ll do:

• Learn how scientists currently work, including their tools, data, language, and constraints.
• Identify high-value workflows where Altara can make an immediate difference.
• Drive pilots toward measurable outcomes, such as improving yield or shortening an R&D process, creating clear customer wins and accelerating deal cycles.
• Configure the product, troubleshoot issues, and build lightweight solutions around and with our customers.
• Teach users how to incorporate Altara into their daily work and create new champions and power users.
• Bring recurring customer insights back to engineering and turn them into reusable product capabilities, helping shape our product and engineering roadmap.

We would love to meet you if you have:

• Enough technical depth to understand data, troubleshoot integrations, configure the product, and prototype simple solutions
• Scientific fluency from engineering, physics, robotics, manufacturing, semiconductors, physics, chemistry, materials science, or a related field
• High social stamina and genuine energy from spending days with customers
• The patience to teach people who are unfamiliar with AI
• Strong discovery skills and the confidence to keep asking questions when others stop
• Product judgment to separate a one-off customer request from something Altara should build for everyone
• Comfort traveling, operating independently, and working through ambiguity

Bonus points if you have:

• Worked at an early stage startup, founded a company, or plan to start one someday.
• Experience working with a large variety of customers across industries and teaching them how to use new technology
• Experience or deep curiosity in science - you can talk shop with our customers about the problems they face

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