Forward Deployed Engineer, Enterprise AI Automation (SF/NYC)

Job Description

Job Description

Lavendo partners with startups and high‑growth companies to help them hire top‑tier sales, GTM, and technical talent. This role is with one of our clients; we’ll share full details about the company and interview process as we get to know you and confirm mutual fit.

About the Company

Our client is a Series A enterprise AI startup building software that automates complex business processes. Its platform combines natural-language instructions with structured software execution, helping enterprises turn detailed operating procedures into reliable, production-ready workflows.

Our client already supports Fortune 500 deployments in environments where accuracy, sensitive data, and process adherence matter. The team includes former founders, engineers, and enterprise operators with experience building products and delivering large-scale customer implementations.

The Mission

Make complex enterprise processes run reliably as software.

Our client helps organizations automate work that spans multiple systems, detailed business rules, and substantial manual effort. The goal is to deliver complete workflows that hold up in production and improve through feedback from the people who know the process best.

The Opportunity

Own enterprise deployments from the first customer conversation to a working system in production.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer , you’ll understand the customer’s process, make architecture decisions, write code, lead the rollout, and stay close to the results. You’ll work directly with operators and executives, navigate technical and organizational blockers, and help expand successful implementations across the business. What you learn will also shape the platform and how future deployments are built.

This role combines substantial engineering work with customer relationships and operational responsibility. Expect approximately 60 hours per week across 6 days, with full-time, in-person work in San Francisco or New York City.

What You'll Do

• Map customer workflows, uncover requirements, and turn ambiguous processes into clear implementation plans.

• Write production code and build reliable automations using our client’s platform.

• Design implementations for high-volume processes across enterprise systems.

• Own discovery, pilot delivery, production rollout, and ongoing iteration.

• Resolve deployment issues and work with customers to drive adoption.

• Explain technical decisions and tradeoffs to operators, engineers, and executives.

• Identify additional automation opportunities and help scale successful deployments.

• Turn lessons from customer work into reusable deployment patterns and platform improvements.

What You Bring

• Hands-on software engineering experience, strong fundamentals, and a track record of shipping production applications.

• The ability to independently build and ship a full-stack application.

• Experience taking an unclear problem through architecture, implementation, and delivery.

• Strong communication skills and genuine interest in working directly with customers.

• Willingness to own implementation, operational issues, and customer relationships alongside the code.

• Willingness to work approximately 60 hours per week across 6 days, full-time on-site in San Francisco or New York City, with relocation if needed.

Our client typically targets engineers with 2–8 years of experience and also considers exceptional early-career builders and experienced former founders. Relevant backgrounds include hands-on enterprise delivery, founding engineering, and technical consulting with substantial software development ownership. Startup experience and engineering work spanning product, growth, or other customer-facing functions are particularly valuable.

Key Success Drivers

• Ownership: You spot what needs doing, make decisions, and follow through until the deployment works.

• Customer judgment: You ask good questions, understand the operating context, and challenge assumptions constructively.

• Technical judgment: You build reliable systems and choose solutions that fit the actual problem.

• Communication: You earn trust and keep people aligned when requirements or priorities change.

• Adaptability: You can move between coding, discovery, troubleshooting, and customer conversations.

• Commitment: You understand the disclosed workload and genuinely want the pace and responsibility that come with it.

Why Join?

• Compensation: 160,000–225,000 annual base salary, plus equity.

• Scope: Own architecture, implementation, customer relationships, and deployment outcomes from start to finish.

• Production impact: Build systems that automate important enterprise processes and reduce substantial manual work.

• Product influence: Use what you learn in the field to improve the platform and establish how future deployments are delivered.

• Team: Work alongside experienced engineers, enterprise operators, and former founders.

• Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision coverage; health care and dependent care FSAs; long-term disability and life insurance. Medical and dental plans include 100% covered preventive care.

• Visa support: Transfers and sponsorship may be available, subject to the candidate’s circumstances and confirmation during hiring.

Interviewing Process

• HR Screening.

• Initial conversation with Team Lead: Background, motivation, and mutual fit.

• Technical interview. Practical programming in CoderPad; the candidate writes real code.

• Case study. Discover the customer’s problem, propose a technical solution and architecture, and convince the customer to move forward. Tests communication and cross-functional thinking.

• In-person work trial - one day: Work alongside the team on an actual deployment, use the product, build a real automation, and present the result.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran or military status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Compensation Range: $160K - $225K