Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

FDE Team; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 215,000; Full time

Job summary

FDE Team is seeking a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer who will work closely with trusted partner companies to understand customer problems, build rapid field solutions, and translate learnings into product requirements. The role emphasizes direct customer engagement, field-driven product decisions, and frequent travel.

Ideal candidates bring 4+ years of relevant experience in both large enterprises and startups, with strong engineering fundamentals, exceptional communication, and a bias

Qualifications

• 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience in both a big-tech/enterprise environment and a startup.
• Startup experience with minimal processes or guardrails.
• Direct experience working with end users to solve real problems.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to build quickly.
• Strong written and verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Work directly alongside end users to understand real problems.
• Build fast, practical solutions including analyses, integrations, scripts, and prototypes.
• Ship against ambiguous and constantly changing requirements.
• Translate customer pain points into clear product requirements.
• Help shape the product roadmap based on frontline customer learnings.
• Work closely with engineering and product teams to turn field insights into product improvements.
• Operate in sensitive, regulated, or mission-critical environments.
• Travel regularly to work directly with users.

Skills

End user interaction

Engineering fundamentals

Bias toward action

Strong communication

Travel readiness

Job description

This role is with one of FDE Teams's trusted partner companies. We work closely with their teams to understand the environment, expectations, and problems the person joining will actually be solving.

The Role

We're looking for a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer who is comfortable getting close to the customer, understanding problems firsthand, and building whatever is needed to solve them.

This isn't a conventional engineering role. You'll spend significant time in the field, working directly with users and turning what you learn into product decisions.

The work

• Work directly alongside end users to understand real problems.
• Build fast, practical solutions including analyses, integrations, scripts, and prototypes.
• Ship against ambiguous and constantly changing requirements.
• Translate customer pain points into clear product requirements.
• Help shape the product roadmap based on frontline customer learnings.
• Work closely with engineering and product teams to turn field insights into product improvements.
• Operate in sensitive, regulated, or mission-critical environments.
• Travel regularly to work directly with users.

What you bring

• 4+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience in both a big-tech/enterprise environment and a startup.
• Startup experience and comfort working without mature processes or guardrails.
• Direct experience working with end users to solve real problems.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to build quickly.
• Strong written and verbal communication.
• A bias toward action and comfort operating with incomplete information.
• Genuine interest in building products around real-world problems.
• Willingness to travel 50–75% of the time.

The core of the role is:

Live with the user's problem → build a fast solution → learn from the field → translate that learning into product requirements → ship → repeat.

Compensation: $130,000-$215,000 base + meaningful founding-level equity

Employment Type: Full-time

Travel: 50-75% travel

Remote may be considered for exceptional candidates.