Forward-Deployed Engineer

Forward-Deployed EngineerLocation: San Francisco, CAOn-site five days per week near Oracle Park.Company Stage of Funding: Early Stage / VC-BackedOffice Type: On-site — 5 days per weekCompensation: $150,000 – $200,000 Base Based on experience and qualifications.Equity: Competitive EquityVisa: Open to Visa Transfers — OPT and H-1B transfers supportedExperience: 3+ years of experience in forward-deployed, implementation, solutions engineering, or software engineering rolesEmployment Type: Full-timeHiring Count: 1 candidateCompany DescriptionEarly-stage, VC-backed AI company building an autonomous AI recruiter that conducts real-time interviews with candidates over voice and video.The product integrates directly into existing recruiting workflows and applicant tracking systems, allowing companies and staffing firms to automate candidate screening and interviewing at scale.The engineering team is small, highly technical, and focused on building and deploying AI-powered products for enterprise customers. The Forward-Deployed Engineer is the technical owner of customer deployments and plays an end-to-end role across solution design, software engineering, integrations, implementation, production deployment, and ongoing support.This is not a traditional implementation or customer-success role. You will be hands-on technically, writing code, building integrations, debugging production systems, and translating customer workflows into reliable software.You will work closely with customers to understand their recruiting processes, design solutions, implement them in production, and identify product gaps that should be addressed by the broader engineering team.What You Will Do1. Design & Build Customer WorkflowsTranslate customer recruiting processes into technical workflows that can run reliably in production.Design triggers, filters, interview guides, workflow logic, and downstream actions.Build custom solutions when existing product capabilities do not fully meet customer requirements.Own the full lifecycle from solution design through development, testing, rollout, and verification.Balance customer requirements with scalable and maintainable engineering solutions.2. Build & Own IntegrationsBuild and maintain integrations with applicant tracking systems and other third-party platforms.Work with APIs, authentication, permissions, scopes, webhooks, data mapping, and system-to-system workflows.Own integrations across ATS platforms, assessment providers, identity verification systems, and other customer tools.Diagnose integration failures and drive issues through to root cause.Design reliable integration patterns that can support multiple enterprise customers.3. Lead Technical Customer OnboardingOwn the technical side of customer implementations from initial connection through production launch.Configure permissions and scopes, import jobs, map fields, build workflows, and run test interviews.Sequence implementation steps to identify and resolve issues before customers or candidates encounter them.Work directly with customer stakeholders to understand technical requirements and constraints.Ensure deployments are reliable, tested, documented, and ready for production.4. Own Production Deployments & Customer FeedbackOwn deployed customer systems after launch and ensure they continue working reliably.Diagnose customer and candidate issues to root cause rather than relying on temporary workarounds.Build monitoring and observability that identifies problems before customers report them.Identify recurring technical and product gaps across customer deployments.Turn customer patterns into clear, evidence-based feedback for product engineering.Act as the technical voice of the customer while maintaining strong engineering standards.Ideal Candidate BackgroundExperience Requirements:3+ years of professional experience in forward-deployed engineering, solutions engineering, implementation engineering, software engineering, or a closely related technical role.Experience working with enterprise customers and technically complex implementations.Strong preference for candidates from early-stage or high-growth B2B startups.Demonstrated experience owning technical projects end-to-end.Experience taking requirements from customers or stakeholders and turning them into working technical solutions.Comfortable operating across engineering, implementation, and customer-facing responsibilities.Strong software engineering fundamentals and willingness to remain hands-on with code.Technical Requirements:Strong programming experience, particularly with Python.Experience working with third-party APIs and integrations.Experience with REST APIs, webhooks, authentication, permissions, and data mapping.Ability to understand and debug distributed workflows across multiple systems.Experience with production debugging and incident resolution.Familiarity with React and modern web applications is a plus.Experience with observability and monitoring tools.Strong understanding of software development, testing, deployment, and production systems.Customer & Implementation Requirements:Experience owning customer implementations or technical deployments.Strong ability to translate business workflows into technical requirements.Comfortable leading technical onboarding processes.Experience working directly with customer technical and operational stakeholders.Ability to manage multiple implementation workstreams without losing technical depth.Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills.Ability to identify patterns across customers and translate them into product improvements.Experience working with enterprise software, SaaS, APIs, or complex integrations is strongly preferred.Soft Skills:High ownership and accountability.Strong customer empathy without sacrificing engineering quality.Excellent written and verbal communication.Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments.Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.Able to move quickly and iterate based on real-world feedback.Collaborative and comfortable working closely with product and engineering.Curious, adaptable, and willing to learn new systems quickly.Comfortable working in a small, fast-moving startup.Strong bias toward action and execution.Compensation & Benefits$150,000 – $200,000 base salary, depending on experience and qualifications.Competitive equity.Opportunity to work directly on production AI systems.High ownership over enterprise customer deployments.Direct exposure to customers, product strategy, and engineering decisions.Opportunity to work across software engineering, AI, integrations, and enterprise implementation.Why JoinWork on an AI product that is already being used for real-world recruiting workflows.Own the full technical lifecycle of enterprise deployments.Build integrations and workflows across a wide range of customer systems.Work directly with customers while remaining deeply hands-on technically.Have visibility into product gaps across multiple customers and influence the product roadmap.Join a small, high-ownership engineering team where individual contributions have significant impact.Work at the intersection of AI, enterprise software, integrations, and customer-facing engineering.