Forward Deployed Engineer

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.
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