Forward Deployed Engineer

Forward Deployed Engineer — Applied AI Location: New York City, 5 days onsite Compensation: $300k to $400k on target earnings Experience: ~3–10+ years, with flexibility for exceptional engineers About Our client is a fast-growing, bootstrapped AI company helping Fortune 500 businesses become AI-native. Embeds engineers directly inside major enterprises Builds production AI systems, not decks or POCs Works closely with leading frontier AI labs and technology companies Scaling rapidly through customer revenue rather than traditional VC funding Competes for enterprise work with some of the largest consulting and technology firms in the world The Role As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll own high-impact technical problems from initial discovery through production deployment . You’ll: Work directly with enterprise customers and senior stakeholders Architect, build, deploy, and support production software Build AI agents, copilots, RAG systems, workflow automation, and enterprise integrations Work across backend, frontend, data, APIs, and cloud infrastructure Enter unfamiliar codebases and environments with limited handholding Use modern tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex to increase engineering velocity This is a true engineering role, not traditional Solutions Engineering or consulting. What They're Looking For Strong production ownership: You've personally designed, shipped, and supported meaningful production software Full-stack/generalist ability: Comfortable across backend, APIs, databases, frontend, infrastructure, and deployment Cloud depth: Strong experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure, including CI/CD, containers, reliability, and distributed systems Customer presence: Able to communicate clearly with engineers, operators, and Fortune 500 executives High agency: Comfortable owning ambiguous problems and making technical decisions independently Strong Bonus Signals Production experience with LLMs, agents, RAG, MCP, evals, orchestration, or AI reliability Founder, founding engineer, or early-stage startup experience Open-source contributions or meaningful side projects Strong experience using AI coding tools in your day-to-day workflow Why Join Work on frontier AI problems inside some of the world's largest companies Very high engineering ownership and direct customer impact Exposure to executive-level business problems unusually early High-autonomy, high-performance environment Uncapped cash compensation tied to output