Forward Deployed Engineer

About the role

I’m working with a YC startup building AI systems that are being deployed directly into real-world enterprise workflows.

They’ve recently raised their Seed round, signed initial customers, and are now looking for a highly technical engineer who wants to operate closer to the business, product, and customer problems rather than sitting in a siloed engineering function.

This is not a traditional solutions engineer role.

You’ll be:

building AI agents

writing production code

designing infrastructure

deploying systems into customer environments

working directly with enterprise stakeholders to solve operational problems

The founders are specifically looking for engineers who can both:

build at a high technical level

communicate clearly with customers

The backgrounds they tend to like:

early engineers at AI startups

Palantir / FDSE-style profiles

strong backend or product engineers from high-calibre engineering companies

engineers already building with LLMs, agents, or AI-native tooling

What makes the role interesting:

Very early-stage with real traction already

Small, high-agency team

Direct founder exposure

Real ownership from day one

AI-native engineering culture

Fast-moving environment with very little bureaucracy

Opportunity to shape both product and technical direction early

Tech stack:

Python

Node.js / TypeScript

APIs + integrations

AI agents / LLM systems

cloud infrastructure

production deployments

You’ll likely enjoy this if:

you like building quickly

you enjoy ambiguity

you want your work close to customers/users

you prefer ownership over process

you’re excited by agentic AI systems rather than traditional SaaS

Bay Area onsite preferred.