Forward Deployed Engineer

Luminai; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

A tech automation company in San Mateo, California is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to work closely with customers to design and deploy AI-powered solutions. This role involves embedding directly with clients to understand workflows and translate their needs into scalable systems. The ideal candidate has over 3 years of software engineering experience, strong skills in Python, and familiarity with cloud infrastructure. This hybrid position requires a hands-on approach in both technical and non-technical environments.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of software engineering experience, ideally with backend or systems-focused work.
• Strong proficiency in Python (TypeScript / JavaScript experience is a plus).
• Experience working with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Strong communication skills and comfort working with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Embed directly with customers to understand their workflows and design solutions.
• Design, build, and deploy AI-driven solutions tailored to operational problems.
• Maintain production systems including APIs, integrations, and monitoring.
• Translate business requirements and customer needs into technical architectures.

Skills

Software engineering

Python

Cloud infrastructure

Communication

AI systems

Job description

About Luminai

Nearly every organization in the world relies on complex manual work to carry out critical internal processes. These are processes that keep the world going — enrolling patients in a hospital, underwriting loans inside a bank, or processing new transactions for an airline. Yet most companies don’t have enough resources to properly automate these tasks and are stuck in manual, decades old way of doing things.

At Luminai, we develop technology to automate long-form organization wide workflows of any complexity easily and safely using AI. Luminai serves some of the world’s most critical organizations in sectors like Healthcare, Finance, and Telecommunication to delegate mission-critical workflows that previously required hands-on human involvement, over to autonomous AI systems. Our approach combines frontier AI development, with a purpose built workflow execution engine to achieve this goal.

We\'ve raised significant amounts of capital (including some un-announced) from many of the best Silicon Valley VCs: General Catalyst, YCombinator, and investors including Kevin Weil (Chief Product Officer at OpenAI), Arash Ferdowsi (co-founder of Dropbox), Katie Stanton (former VP Global Media, Twitter) and CEOs of companies including Flexport, Notion, Front, Ramp and Twitch.

About The Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you will sit at the intersection of engineering, product, and customer delivery. You’ll embed directly with customers, deeply understand their workflows, and design and deploy AI-powered solutions that deliver immediate, real-world impact.

This is a highly autonomous, hands-on role for someone who thrives in ambiguous environments, enjoys working directly with customers, and wants to shape product direction through what they see in the field. You’ll partner closely with Product and Engineering to turn customer needs into scalable systems that improve how healthcare organizations operate.

This is a hybrid position. Our team is in-office 3 days a week (Mon, Tue, Thu) in San Mateo, California.

What You’ll Do

• Embed directly with customers to understand their workflows, constraints, and success criteria

• Design, build, and deploy AI-driven solutions tailored to real operational problems

• Build and maintain production systems including APIs, integrations, monitoring, and feedback loops

• Translate business requirements and customer needs into technical architectures and implementations

• Operate in high-stakes environments where reliability, speed, and judgment matter

• Identify patterns across customer deployments and feed insights back into core product and platform development

• Partner closely with Product and Engineering to influence roadmap, abstractions, and long-term system design

• Own deployments end-to-end, from initial scoping through launch and iteration

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years of software engineering experience, ideally with backend or systems-focused work

• Strong proficiency in Python (TypeScript / JavaScript experience is a plus)

• Experience working with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

• Ability to translate ambiguous requirements into working, production-ready systems

• Strong communication skills and comfort working with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• High ownership mindset with the ability to operate independently in fast-changing environments

• Experience with AI systems (LLMs, vector databases, prompt engineering, or agent frameworks) is a strong plus