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Senior / Staff Forward Deployed Engineer
Job Summary
Join our San Francisco team as a Forward Deployed Engineer, serving as the technical interface and project leader between our organization and customers. You will build and deploy sophisticated AI-driven solutions at scale, leading engagements from discovery to maintenance. This role combines hands-on engineering with customer leadership to drive business growth and deliver world-class results.
Essential Functions
- Lead customer engagements end-to-end, including discovery calls, demos, stakeholder alignment, deployment oversight, and blocker removal
- Design and ship production-ready AI agents using large-scale data, backend code, integrations, and cloud infrastructure
- Own the full agent development lifecycle, from rapid prototyping and CI/CD setup to monitoring, iteration, and documentation
- Mentor agent engineers to develop into project leaders while upholding excellence standards
- Debug live issues in real-time, unlock business opportunities, and contribute to winning, retaining, and expanding customers
- Close feedback loops with product and platform teams by capturing needs, prototyping features, and collaborating on platform improvements
Required Qualifications
- 4-15 years of hands-on engineering experience in customer-facing roles, such as Forward Deployed Engineer or Solution Architect
- Strong backend or fullstack engineering fundamentals with system architecture and design expertise
- Experience scaling infrastructure for multi-tenancy and business growth
- Hands-on experience with AI models, distributed systems, and coding
- Demonstrated career progression with consistent promotions or expanding scope
- Strong infrastructure experience addressing scaling challenges
Preferred Qualifications
- 7+ years for Staff level in backend engineering with advanced system architecture skills
- Blend of big tech and high-growth startup experience
- Experience at high-growth SaaS startups or as a former founder
- Proven leadership in technical projects for large enterprise customers with cross-functional teams
- Direct experience building or deploying AI agents
Technical Skills
- Backend engineering
- System architecture
- System design
- AI models
- Distributed systems
- Cloud infrastructure
- CI/CD pipelines
- Large-scale data processing
- Integrations development
- Real-time debugging
Education & Certifications
Degree in Computer Science or Mathematics required.
Compensation & Benefits
Competitive base salary range of $180,000 - $350,000 annually, depending on experience and level, plus comprehensive benefits package for direct hire position.