Founding FDE

Operon (YC S26); San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Operon is a YC-backed startup building the context layer for AI agents in industrial enterprise. We deploy our first product in the Process and Manufacturing Industry.

You’ll be on the ground with customers, figuring out how our software fits into messy real-world workflows and feeding that back into what we build. The Founding Forward Deployment Engineer will own projects, embed with customers, and help define and implement production-grade code across backend, frontend, data pipelines, and AI

Qualifications

• Ownership of projects.
• Define what Forward Deployed Engineering means at Operon.

Responsibilities

• Embed with customers to understand engineering workflows at the source.
• Ship production code across backend, frontend, data pipelines, and AI workflows.
• Translate ambiguous customer pain into durable product abstractions.
• Debug failures in real environments.
• Work directly with the founder on product, architecture, customer deployment, and technical strategy.

Job description

Founding Forward Deployment Engineer

Operon is building the context layer for AI agents in industrial enterprise, the infrastructure that lets AI actually understand what's happening on a job site, in a facility, or across a fleet of equipment. We're four months old, YC-backed, and we're deploying our first product in the Process and Manufacturing Industry. This is not a polish-and-ship role. You'll be on the ground with customers, figuring out how our software fits into messy real-world workflows, and feeding that directly back into what we build.

What You’ll Have

• Full ownership of projects.
• You will define what “Forward Deployed Engineering” means at Operon.

What You’ll Do

• Embed with customers to understand engineering workflows at the source.
• Ship production code across backend, frontend, data pipelines, and AI workflows.
• Translate ambiguous customer pain into durable product abstractions.
• Debug failures in real environments.
• Work directly with the founder on product, architecture, customer deployment, and technical strategy.