Forward Deployed Engineer

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Forward Deployed Engineer
Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite - 5 Days/Week)
Company Stage of Funding: Series A AI + Fintech + Banking Infrastructure
Office Type: Onsite (Market & Montgomery, San Francisco)
Salary: $160,000 - $265,000 Base
Equity: 75th Percentile Equity Package
Bonus: Competitive Total Compensation
Visa: No Sponsorship Available
Company Description

Our client is building the future of commercial banking through AI-native infrastructure that automates lending, underwriting, and banking operations.

The platform enables financial institutions to replace decades-old legacy systems with AI-powered workflows that automate up to 90% of traditionally manual banking processes while maintaining compliance and human oversight.

Founded by Stanford alumni with deep expertise in banking and machine learning, the company has raised over $30M and is rapidly becoming one of the leading AI infrastructure platforms serving financial institutions.

The platform powers:

• AI-Powered Lending Workflows
• Underwriting Automation
• Banking Operations Automation
• Commercial Lending Infrastructure
• Credit Analysis Systems
• Financial Workflow Orchestration
• Customer Onboarding Automation
• Banking Compliance Systems
• AI Copilots for Financial Institutions
• Enterprise Banking Infrastructure

Engineering challenges include:

• AI-native workflow automation
• Banking system modernization
• Enterprise software deployments
• Customer-specific workflow customization
• Full-stack product development
• AI application infrastructure
• Human-in-the-loop systems
• Banking compliance workflows
• Real-time operational systems
• Enterprise-scale product deployments

The company operates at the intersection of AI, banking, and enterprise software, offering engineers direct exposure to customers while building products that fundamentally transform how financial institutions operate.

The culture values:

• Customer obsession
• Ownership
• Product thinking
• Speed
• Technical excellence
• Curiosity
• Pragmatism
• Learning velocity
• High accountability
• End-to-end execution

What You Will Do

• Embed directly with banking customers and learn their workflows firsthand
• Work alongside lenders, underwriters, and banking operators
• Identify operational bottlenecks and opportunities for automation
• Build software that directly improves customer workflows
• Extend the core platform into new customer use cases
• Develop AI-powered systems that replace manual banking processes
• Ship full-stack product features from concept through deployment
• Build customer-facing applications using React and Next.js
• Design backend services and APIs supporting banking workflows
• Develop database schemas and application architectures
• Work closely with product, customers, and engineering teams
• Gather insights from customer deployments and influence product direction
• Migrate customers from legacy systems to modern AI-native platforms
• Iterate rapidly based on real-world customer feedback
• Own deployments from problem definition through production rollout
• Contribute to platform architecture and product strategy
• Build scalable enterprise-grade software solutions
• Operate with significant ownership and autonomy
• Help define best practices for future customer deployments
• Drive product adoption and customer success through engineering execution

Ideal Candidate Background

• 0-5 years of software engineering experience
• Strong full-stack engineering background
• Experience building and shipping products end-to-end
• Experience building customer-facing applications
• Strong TypeScript experience
• Experience with React and Next.js
• Experience working across frontend and backend systems
• Experience designing APIs and backend services
• Experience with PostgreSQL or relational databases
• Strong product engineering mindset
• Ability to thrive in customer-facing environments
• Strong communication skills
• Experience operating in ambiguous environments
• Strong technical execution ability
• Comfortable working directly with users and customers
• Ability to quickly understand complex workflows
• Strong ownership mentality
• Startup experience preferred
• Interest in AI-powered products and enterprise software

Strong Signals
Forward Deployed Engineering Signals

• Experience working directly with customers
• Built software informed by user workflows
• Product ownership from discovery through deployment
• Experience gathering requirements firsthand
• Strong customer empathy
• Experience solving operational problems with software
• Ability to translate customer pain points into product features
• Experience in implementation, solutions engineering, or FDE-style roles

Product Engineering Signals

• Built products from 0→1
• Full-stack ownership experience
• Strong product intuition
• End-to-end feature ownership
• Experience shipping quickly and iterating
• Strong frontend and backend capabilities
• Startup product development experience
• Demonstrated product craftsmanship

Startup Signals

• Early employee experience
• Startup experience at Seed-Series B companies
• Significant ownership of business outcomes
• Operated effectively on small teams
• Entrepreneurial mindset
• High execution velocity
• Resourcefulness and autonomy
• Demonstrated initiative

Bonus Signals

• Fintech experience
• Banking software experience
• Lending or underwriting technology
• AI application experience
• LLM-powered products
• Workflow automation systems
• Enterprise SaaS experience
• Customer-facing technical roles

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $160,000 - $265,000
• 75th Percentile Equity Package
• Significant Ownership and Autonomy
• Direct Customer Exposure
• Opportunity to Build AI for Banking
• High-Impact Product Ownership
• Strong Product-Market Fit
• Backed by Top Venture Investors
• Fast-Growing Company
• Small Team with Outsized Impact
• Direct Collaboration with Founders
• Career Growth Opportunity

Why Join

This is an opportunity to build AI systems that fundamentally transform how banks operate.

Rather than working on isolated backend services or internal tooling, you'll spend time directly with customers, understanding real-world problems and building software that immediately improves how people work.

You'll own the full lifecycle of product development - from observing workflows and identifying problems to shipping solutions used by customers in production.

The role offers a rare combination of product engineering, customer exposure, AI applications, and startup ownership.

If you enjoy building products from scratch, working closely with users, and owning software from idea to deployment, this role offers exceptional scope and career upside.