Generative AI Engineer (FDE)

Forward Deployed Engineer — Applied AI

Location: New York City, 5 days onsite

Compensation: $300k to $400k on target earnings

Experience: ~3–10+ years, with flexibility for exceptional engineers

About

Our client is a fast-growing, bootstrapped AI company helping Fortune 500 businesses become AI-native.

• Embeds engineers directly inside major enterprises
• Builds production AI systems, not decks or POCs
• Works closely with leading frontier AI labs and technology companies
• Scaling rapidly through customer revenue rather than traditional VC funding
• Competes for enterprise work with some of the largest consulting and technology firms in the world

The Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer, you'll own high-impact technical problems from initial discovery through production deployment .

You’ll:

• Work directly with enterprise customers and senior stakeholders
• Architect, build, deploy, and support production software
• Build AI agents, copilots, RAG systems, workflow automation, and enterprise integrations
• Work across backend, frontend, data, APIs, and cloud infrastructure
• Enter unfamiliar codebases and environments with limited handholding
• Use modern tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex to increase engineering velocity

This is a true engineering role, not traditional Solutions Engineering or consulting.

What They're Looking For

• Strong production ownership: You've personally designed, shipped, and supported meaningful production software
• Full-stack/generalist ability: Comfortable across backend, APIs, databases, frontend, infrastructure, and deployment
• Cloud depth: Strong experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure, including CI/CD, containers, reliability, and distributed systems
• Customer presence: Able to communicate clearly with engineers, operators, and Fortune 500 executives
• High agency: Comfortable owning ambiguous problems and making technical decisions independently

Strong Bonus Signals

• Production experience with LLMs, agents, RAG, MCP, evals, orchestration, or AI reliability
• Founder, founding engineer, or early-stage startup experience
• Open-source contributions or meaningful side projects
• Strong experience using AI coding tools in your day-to-day workflow

Why Join

• Work on frontier AI problems inside some of the world's largest companies
• Very high engineering ownership and direct customer impact
• Exposure to executive-level business problems unusually early
• High-autonomy, high-performance environment
• Uncapped cash compensation tied to output