Forward Deployed Software Engineer

Recruiter Concierge; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k

Health insurance

Meals provided

Ubers covered

Job summary

Recruiter Concierge presents a Forward Deployed Engineer role with our client, a frontier AI lab partner, on-site in San Francisco. You will own deployments from discovery through production, translating complex dataset challenges into scalable architectures and production systems.

You'll work across computer vision, audio, NLP, and multimodal data, prototyping quickly and delivering reliable infrastructure while collaborating with customers and internal teams. 1–3 years required.

Qualifications

• 1–3 years of experience delivering technical solutions in startup or high-velocity environments.
• Strong Python development experience building custom algorithms, ML workflows, or large-scale data pipelines.
• Experience working directly with customers to translate ambiguous technical requirements into production systems.
• Understanding of dataset quality, filtering, labeling, evaluation, and edge-case analysis.
• Ability to move quickly between research prototypes and production-ready software.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to customer stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Partner directly with customers to understand dataset and AI workflow requirements.
• Translate business needs into scalable technical architectures and delivery plans.
• Design and build custom algorithms, ML workflows, and large-scale data pipelines.
• Develop production systems across vision, audio, NLP, and multimodal AI.
• Prototype solutions and productionize reliable, scalable infrastructure.
• Break objectives into models, heuristics, infrastructure, validation, and QA workflows.
• Optimize performance through preprocessing, post-processing, and inference optimization.
• Own deployments from discovery through production launch.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to improve deployment processes.

Skills

Python development

ML workflows

Data pipelines

Customer engagement

Technical communication

Tools

PyTorch

Job description

About Our Client:

Our client partners with frontier AI labs and enterprise customers to solve highly specialized dataset challenges. They build custom algorithms, machine learning models, and large-scale data pipelines that power the next generation of AI systems. Their work spans video, audio, and multimodal data processing for AI training and evaluation, helping some of the world's most advanced AI organizations build higher-quality AI models. Their team is small, highly technical, and moving quickly to scale deployments across leading AI organizations. This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of AI engineering, customer deployment, and production systems.

About the Role:

Our client is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer to work directly with customers, owning technical deployments from discovery through production. You'll partner with frontier AI labs and enterprise customers to understand complex dataset challenges, design technical solutions, and build production systems that find, generate, filter, transform, evaluate, and package high-quality datasets.

This is a highly customer-facing engineering role that blends software engineering, machine learning, data engineering, and technical consulting. You'll move seamlessly between customer conversations, research prototypes, and production deployments while ensuring successful outcomes for every engagement.

What You’ll Do:

• Partner directly with customers to understand ambiguous dataset and AI workflow requirements
• Translate business needs into scalable technical architectures and delivery plans
• Design and build custom algorithms, machine learning workflows, and large-scale data pipelines
• Develop production systems across computer vision, audio processing, natural language processing, and multimodal AI
• Rapidly prototype solutions while productionizing reliable, scalable infrastructure
• Break customer objectives into models, heuristics, infrastructure, validation, and quality assurance workflows
• Optimize performance through preprocessing, post-processing, parallelization, inference optimization, fine-tuning, and evaluation pipelines
• Own customer deployments from initial discovery through successful production launch
• Collaborate closely with engineering and product teams to continuously improve deployment processes and customer outcomes

Requirements:

Must have:

• 1-3 years of experience delivering technical solutions in a startup or other high-velocity environment
• Strong Python development experience building custom algorithms, machine learning workflows, or large-scale data pipelines
• Experience working directly with customers to translate ambiguous technical requirements into production systems
• Strong understanding of dataset quality, filtering, labeling, evaluation, and edge-case analysis
• Ability to move quickly between research prototypes and production-ready software
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to customer stakeholders

Nice to have:

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building production ML workflows for video, audio, or multimodal AI
• Hands-on experience with large-scale distributed data pipelines
• Experience with PyTorch or similar machine learning frameworks
• Previous experience in a Forward Deployed Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, or Applied AI role
• Active open-source contributions
• Experience as an early engineering hire at a fast-growing startup

Why Join?

• Work directly with some of the world's leading AI labs and enterprise AI teams
• Own customer deployments from technical discovery through production success
• Solve complex, real-world AI infrastructure and multimodal data challenges
• Join a small, fast-moving team where you'll have significant ownership and influence
• Help build the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI systems

Compensation: $150K-$250K equity

Benefits & Perks

• 401k Full Health Insurance
• Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner covered
• Choice of snacks
• Ubers covered home

Job Details:

Location: On-site 5 days a week

Employment: Full-Time

Years of Experience: 1-3 years

Visa Sponsorship: Yes