Forward Deployed Engineer - Voice AI for Lending

A strong engineer who'd rather be in the room with the customer than three layers away from them?

A YC-backed startup is building an AI platform that runs the borrower side of consumer lending, with mortgage as the first market. Their voice and SMS agents work inside the call centers, collections and compliance teams of US mortgage lenders: taking payments, answering escrow questions, qualifying new loans and reaching out to borrowers who've fallen behind. Each conversation the AI has is graded on the lender's own QA criteria, so it stays compliant with FDCPA, RESPA and TILA.

Why it matters: servicers are chronically understaffed when delinquencies spike, borrowers wait on hold just to make a payment, and regulators don't forgive mistakes. The aim: up to 80% lower servicing costs, borrowers who can get help day and night, and lenders with a full audit trail of every interaction. The traction is real: $1B+ in payments processed, and the team will roughly triple before the year is out.

They're hiring 4 FDEs .

What you'll own

• You're the engineer the biggest customers know by name, embedded with lenders that include several of the ten largest in the US
• Building, configuring and launching AI agents that handle live borrower conversations
• Shipping production backend and full-stack code in Python, TypeScript or Java that connects loan servicing platforms, data sources and telephony
• Owning each agent from first prototype through CI/CD and live monitoring, tuning it until it hits target, and writing down what works
• Turning fuzzy customer requests into stable deployments, and feeding what you learn back into the product and roadmap

Your first month: becoming a product expert.

What you bring

• At least 3 years as a professional engineer (3–5 is ideal), with a year or more in front of customers
• Strong in Python, TypeScript or Java; you're at home building APIs and backend services
• An engineer at heart who wants customer contact, rather than a consultant who codes on the side
• Very high attention to detail; you own projects end to end with little or no guidance
• Confident with business leaders and engineers alike
• Genuine curiosity about mortgage and lending
• AI-native: Claude, Cursor or Codex are part of your daily workflow
• Based in SF or ready to relocate right away; 5 days a week in person

Bonus points

• FDE, solutions or sales engineering experience (Palantir-style forward deployed work is a direct match)
• Applied engineering at an AI agent company, or a fast-moving Series A–C startup with real customer exposure
• Mortgage, lending or fintech background
• Voice agents, telephony or call-center infrastructure
• Founding engineer at a YC startup that scaled
• Vertical AI in regulated fields such as healthcare, legal or finance

What's in it for you

• $170k–$250k base
• Early seat at a fast-growing team, with the biggest lenders in the US as customers
• Visa: H-1B transfer, TN and O-1 supported

Good to know

• Full-time, 5 days a week in the San Francisco office
• Process: 15-min call with the CEO -> 1-hour live coding -> 1-hour session on designing AI agents (orchestration, latency, evaluation, what breaks) -> half-to-full-day onsite -> offer