Forward Deployed Engineer

Harrison Clarke; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 132,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

Harrison Clarke in San Mateo, CA, is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead customer deployments of our AI systems, shaping architecture, data integrations, and user experiences. You'll work directly with engineering and enterprise customers, translate challenges into AI use cases, build end-to-end solutions, and ensure production readiness and post-deployment success.

Ideal candidates have a physical engineering background, experience shipping AI in production, strong Python, and a track

Qualifications

• Engineering background in automotive, aerospace, mechanical, electrical, or similar.
• Experience shipping data-driven or AI systems to production; Python preferred.
• Comfortable working directly with customers and technical leaders.
• Integrated or extended AI systems in production.
• Rapidly build integrations between disparate customer systems.
• Delivered solutions in secure enterprise environments.
• Experience with live production troubleshooting and customer incident response.
• Prior experience at an automotive OEM, supplier, or adjacent industry is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead for customer deployments, making key decisions on architecture, data integrations, and user experience.
• Lead discovery sessions with customer engineering teams, translate challenges into AI use cases, and design how the product integrates into workflows.
• Build end-to-end AI solutions, take them into production, and provide post-deployment support to ensure customer success.
• Connect the AI system to customer engineering data sources and tools, iterating until it delivers measurable value.
• Identify, collect, and prepare customer data to fine-tune models; source evaluation criteria from customer sessions to validate improved capability.
• Diagnose and resolve critical issues in live deployments; drive root-cause analysis and implement durable improvements.
• Collaborate closely with internal AI specialists to develop novel systems capable of executing critical customer engineering tasks.

Skills

Engineering background

Python experience

Customer interaction

AI systems in production

System integrations

Production troubleshooting

Automotive domain experience

Job description

Location: San Mateo, CA

Compensation: up to $220k base (depending on experience)

Harrison Clarke are partnered with a well-funded AI company building an agentic AI system designed to operate as a teammate inside engineering organizations - not a tool, but an AI agent that works alongside human engineers using the same complex engineering tools they use. The company recently closed a $50M+ Series A from a top-tier VC and is backed by luminaries from leading AI labs. They are preparing to launch with new automotive customers and need a Forward Deployed Engineer to lead that deployment.

Role Requirements

• Serve as the technical lead for customer deployments, making key decisions on architecture, data integrations, and user experience
• Lead discovery sessions with customer engineering teams, translate their challenges into AI use cases, and design how the product integrates into their workflows
• Build end-to-end AI solutions, take them into production, and provide post-deployment support to ensure customer success
• Connect the AI system to customer engineering data sources and tools, iterating until it delivers measurable value
• Identify, collect, and prepare customer data to fine-tune models; source evaluation criteria from customer sessions to validate improved capability
• Diagnose and resolve critical issues in live deployments; drive root-cause analysis and implement durable improvements
• Collaborate closely with internal AI specialists to develop novel systems capable of executing critical customer engineering tasks

Profile Signals

• A physical engineering background in automotive, aerospace, mechanical, electrical, or similar. You understand how engineering organizations operate from the inside
• Experience shipping data-driven or AI systems to production. Python experience strongly preferred
• Comfortable working directly with customers and technical leaders. You've run technical discovery, built trust with enterprise teams, and translated problems into solutions
• Have integrated or extended AI systems in production. Bonus points for engineering or scientific domains
• Can rapidly build integrations between disparate customer systems
• Delivered solutions in secure enterprise environments
• Experience with live production troubleshooting and customer incident response
• Prior experience at an automotive OEM, supplier, or adjacent industry is a strong plus

Ideal Background

• Started as an engineer in a physical domain (automotive, aerospace, manufacturing, robotics)
• Transitioned into software, AI, or technical implementation
• Has held customer-facing technical roles like FDE, solutions engineer, consulting engineer, or similar
• Understands agentic AI systems, RAG, model fine-tuning, or production ML workflows