Software Engineer

limitless; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 450,000; Full time

Job summary

limitless is hiring a Forward Deployed Engineer who embeds inside client codebases, own architecture, and ships production AI systems. You’ll work directly with client engineers, balance greenfield and existing infra, and decide what is reusable while explaining tradeoffs to stakeholders.

You’ll typically spend ~60% on new development and ~40% on enhancing existing systems, with compensation built on output. Visa: TN visa or Green Card holders only; H-1B sponsorship not available.

Qualifications

• Full cloud experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and hands-on RAG/agentic systems.
• Walk someone through exactly how a system you built actually works.
• Comfort owning a client relationship yourself rather than handing off to someone else.

Responsibilities

• Dropped into unfamiliar codebases and become productive fast.
• Genuinely building with agentic coding tools daily and shipping with them.
• Roughly 60% greenfield work, 40% building on existing infrastructure.
• Owning features end to end - architecture, implementation, deployment, and PR reviews.
• Explaining technical tradeoffs clearly to the client engineers.
• Occasional client site visits.

Skills

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

Agentic coding tools

Client relationship management

End-to-end feature ownership

Architectural reasoning

Tools

Agentic coding tools

Job description

Forward Deployed Engineer - Build AI That Actually Ships - $180K Base, $400K+ OTE

Every Fortune 500 company is now asking the same question: what does it mean to run this business if AI does half the work in five years. Most don't have an answer. Most are stuck with agencies who show up, build a demo, present a nice deck, and disappear before anything actually ships.

I'm working with a fast-growing AI transformation company that operates completely differently.

They're a preferred partner of one of the frontier AI labs, sitting in the room with that lab's own applied AI teams on real client work, and they're seeing several new enterprise deals land every single day off the back of that relationship.

Their engineers don't hand off to someone else once the plan is agreed - they embed directly inside the client's codebase, own the architecture, and stay until the workflow is genuinely running in production with nobody from the company in the room.

This is a Forward Deployed Engineer role, and it's closer to founder work than traditional delivery work. The requirements move while you're building. You have to figure out which problem actually matters, build the first version, notice what breaks, explain the tradeoffs to the people relying on it, and decide what becomes reusable.

A flavour of what you'd actually be doing:

• Dropped into unfamiliar codebases, sometimes fifteen-year-old legacy systems, sometimes greenfield builds, and expected to get productive fast
• Genuinely building with agentic coding tools daily - not listing them as a skill, actually shipping with them
• Roughly 60% greenfield work, 40% building on existing infrastructure
• Owning features end to end - architecture, implementation, deployment, and the relationship with the client engineer reviewing your PR
• Sitting across the table from the client yourself - explaining a technical tradeoff clearly is as much a part of this job as writing the code
• Occasional client site visits rather than living out of a suitcase

On comp, it's built to reward output rather than time served:

• $180K guaranteed base
• Uncapped quarterly bonus tied directly to what you ship - typical performers add $20-30K a quarter once ramped in, so realistic OTE lands around $260-300K+
• Top performers are seeing $50-60K+ a quarter on top of base, pushing total comp well over $400K
• Usually takes 1-2 months to start seeing meaningful bonus once you're up and running

Visa: this role is open to TN visa holders and Green Card holders only. Unfortunately, we're not able to consider candidates requiring H-1B sponsorship for this position.

What you'll need - full cloud experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure) is essential, and real hands‑on depth building production RAG or agentic systems, not just having read about them. You should be able to walk someone through exactly how something you built actually works, not just what it achieved. You'll also need to be comfortable owning a client relationship yourself rather than handing that off to someone else on the team.