Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Runtime; United States; On-site; USD 126,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Runtime is hiring for a founder FDE-level role with a fast-growing AI developer tools company redefining how engineering teams ship code. The position centers on embedding with enterprise teams, diagnosing blockers, and turning insights into working prototypes that make the product indispensable.

You will quickly spin up proofs of concept, implement workarounds when necessary, and escalate learnings back to the core engineering team to influence the product roadmap.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with agentic systems and MCP servers.
• Proven ability to engage with enterprise engineering teams and earn trust.
• Ability to translate vague customer problems into working prototypes quickly.

Responsibilities

• Embed with enterprise engineering teams to understand blockers and drive adoption.
• Spin up a proof of concept rapidly and deliver tangible value today.
• If needed, build a workaround to demonstrate product potential and feed learnings back to engineering.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

Agentic systems

MCP servers

Job description

Comp: up to $210K base + 20% OTE + Equity

Runtime is hiring on behalf of our client, a fast-growing AI developer tools company redefining how the world's most ambitious engineering teams ship code.

The company:

$120M raised, Series B

ARR 10x'd last year

Enterprise customers include some of the biggest names in tech and retail

Named in Gartner's Magic Quadrant - and just hit number one for their category

The problem they're solving:

Engineering teams are shipping more AI-generated code than ever. The bottleneck isn't generation anymore - it's quality. Using the same model to write and review your code is a conflict of interest, and enterprises are waking up to that fast. This company made that bet 18 months ago. The market caught up.

The job, honestly:

You show up where the sales conversation ends. Your job is to make the product indispensable.

Embed with enterprise engineering teams - figure out what's actually blocking them

Spin up a proof of concept fast - not "we'll scope that next quarter," today

If the product can't quite do it yet, you build the workaround yourself

Take what you learn in the field back to engineering - not a complaint, roadmap intel

Reach for Claude before you reach for the logs - this team is AI-first and means it

What you'll bring:

• Python and TypeScript - production grade, not tutorial level
• Real hands-on experience with agentic systems and MCP servers
• You've sat in the room with enterprise engineering teams and earned their trust
• You can go from ambiguous customer problem to working prototype fast
• You keep digging after you find the first issue - the answer is usually one layer deeper

Why now:

This is a founding FDE hire. The first people in define how forward deployment works here - the standards, the playbooks, the technical bar. What you learn in production directly shapes what the core team ships next. That window doesn't stay open forever.

Sound like your kind of problem?