Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

David Joseph & Company; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

David Joseph & Company is recruiting a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer in the SF Bay Area to embed with enterprise customers and drive AI agent deployments from scoping to production.

You will own customer accounts end-to-end, feed field learnings back into the product, and help expand adoption and value across client businesses.

Qualifications

• 2–7 years across full-stack software engineering and/or forward-deployed engineering.
• Senior profile (5–7 years) or high-slope early-career profile (2–3 years) with startup exposure.
• A track record of shipping AI/LLM features end-to-end into production.
• Direct experience working inside customer environments (forward-deployed or solutions engineering).
• Strong Python on the backend (FastAPI) and React on the frontend.
• Based in, or willing to relocate to, the SF Bay Area for hybrid work.

Responsibilities

• Embed with customers to learn onboarding, adoption, and renewals, then identify where agents drive value.
• Deploy and configure agents in customer systems—connecting to data sources, wiring up SSO and integrations, and productionizing agents.
• Build evals against real customer data to prove agent quality and iterate until they clear the bar.
• Partner with the go-to-market team as the technical credibility in customer conversations, helping close, activate, and expand accounts.
• Debug live deployments, perform root-cause analysis, and improve the platform.
• Own the smallest end-to-end slice that proves value, then expand from there.

Skills

Python

React

CS/Engineering aptitude

Education

CS or Engineering degree or equivalent

Tools

FastAPI

PostgreSQL

LLMs

RAG

BigQuery

CI/CD

agent frameworks

Job description

SF Bay Area, CA

• Hybrid
• Full-time Compensation: $180K–$230K base + competitive equity

About The Company

Our client is a seed-stage AI startup rebuilding B2B customer operations around long-running AI agents. Instead of the usual support chatbots or pre-sales tooling, they focus on the messy post-sale lifecycle — onboarding, adoption, QBRs, renewals, and churn — deploying agents that deliver high-touch service at scale. They are backed by well-known venture investors and already have enterprise customers running the product in production.

Founded 2025

• small founding team
• Industry: AI, B2B, Enterprise

The Role

We are hiring a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer to embed directly with enterprise customers and take our client's AI agents from scoping to production. You will own accounts end-to-end and feed everything you learn in the field back into the core product — the technical heartbeat of a fast-growing applied-AI team.

What You'll Be Doing

• Embed with customers to learn how they run onboarding, adoption, and renewals, then identify where the agents drive the most value
• Deploy and configure agents against real customer systems — connecting to data sources (warehouses, CRM, BigQuery), wiring up SSO and integrations, and getting agents into production
• Build evals against real customer data to prove agent quality, and iterate until they clear the bar
• Partner with the go-to-market team as the technical credibility in customer conversations, helping close, activate, and expand accounts
• Debug live deployments, run root-cause analysis, and improve the platform when it gets in the way
• Own the smallest end-to-end slice that proves value, then expand from there

Tech stack: Python, FastAPI, React, PostgreSQL, LLMs, RAG, BigQuery, CI/CD, agent frameworks

Requirements

• Roughly 2–7 years across full-stack software engineering and/or forward-deployed engineering
• Either a senior profile (about 5–7 years, with a couple of years each in software engineering and in a forward-deployed / customer-facing role at a strong company or startup) or a high-slope earlier-career profile (2–3 years with standout internships, an early promotion track, or founding-engineer experience at a venture-backed startup)
• A track record of shipping AI/LLM features end-to-end into production — real systems, not just prototypes
• Direct experience working inside customer environments (forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or similar)
• Strong Python on the backend (FastAPI) and React on the frontend
• A CS or Engineering degree, or equivalent skill proven by a history of shipping production systems
• Based in, or willing to relocate to, the SF Bay Area for hybrid work

Nice to Haves

• Experience building evals to measure and hill-climb LLM or agent quality
• Familiarity with agent frameworks, RAG, and connecting AI systems to customer data sources and warehouses
• Comfort partnering with go-to-market teams and being the technical voice in the room with customers

Why Join

• A founding role with broad ownership over product and infrastructure, and real architectural influence
• Fast feedback loops, strong promotion potential, and deep hands‑on exposure to applied AI — voice agents, memory systems, knowledge graphs, and agentic workflows
• Competitive base plus meaningful equity at an early-stage, well‑backed company with genuine enterprise traction

Details

• Location: SF Bay Area, CA
• Work policy: Hybrid
• Compensation: $180K–$230K + equity
• Visa sponsorship: Not available (US citizens / Green Card holders only)
• Employment type: Full-time