Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Description

About the Role

As a Senior Forward Deployed Software Engineer, you partner directly with Zenity's most strategic customers. It is a deeply technical role that blends software development, solution architecture, and hands-on customer engagement.

You will work onsite at Microsoft, embedded with their engineering teams, untangling complex technical challenges, accelerating deployments, and shipping enterprise-grade solutions on top of the Zenity platform. A core part of the mission is extending Zenity onto new platforms, including Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Fabric, and reducing friction between Microsoft's engineering teams and Zenity. You operate where Engineering, Product, and Customer Success meet, turning real needs into scalable solutions while helping steer where the product goes next.

It is built for engineers who love to build, who are energized by hard problems, and who want to work directly with customers to drive real business outcomes.

This role is a hybrid based in Phoenix, AZ and is required to be onsite at AMEX's offices. You will be embedded day to day with AMEX's engineering teams.

About Zenity

Zenity is the leader in AI Agent Security and the first company to bring an agent-centric security platform to market. As enterprises accelerate AI agent adoption, we are establishing the security framework for how AI agents are secured and governed at enterprise scale.

We deliver full-lifecycle visibility, governance, detection, prevention, and response for AI agents from buildtime to runtime, across SaaS, home-grown platforms, and end-user devices. Backed by $55M+ in funding, including a $38M Series B with strategic investment from Microsoft's M12, Zenity is trusted by Fortune 500 enterprises globally.

Join us in shaping how AI agents are secured at enterprise scale.

What You'll Do

Build

• Design and ship production-grade solutions, integrations, and customer-specific capabilities for strategic enterprise deployments.
• Extend Zenity's detections and capabilities onto new platforms, including Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Fabric, and into the LLM features running inside enterprise tenants.
• Build backend services, APIs, and automation workflows using modern engineering practices.
• Use AI coding agents and modern tooling to deliver high-quality solutions, fast.

Deploy

• Support Microsoft's infrastructure and engineering teams in deploying Zenity's newest features, including Outpost and Azure AI Foundry coverage.
• Lead technical deployments and implementations in complex enterprise environments across cloud, identity, security, and AI ecosystems.
• Make sure everything you ship meets enterprise bars for reliability, security, and performance.

Validate

• Test and validate Zenity's detections across new platforms and LLM features inside Microsoft tenants, making sure full execution context is available for analysis.
• Lead the security investigations that come out of validation work, open and manage the resulting incidents, and drive them through to resolution.

Partner

• Work onsite as the technical face of Zenity with Microsoft's engineering, security, and platform teams across the US and India.
• Translate Microsoft's observations and troubleshooting findings into precise, reproducible engineering detail, surfacing the right resource types, telemetry, and execution context so Zenity engineering can act without repeated round-trips.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact between the Microsoft team and Zenity, coordinating timely closure of bugs, stories, and incidents.
• Run the working cadence with Microsoft and Zenity teams to keep open issues moving and accountable through to closure.

Influence

• Spot recurring challenges and turn them into reusable frameworks, tooling, and product capabilities.
• Advocate Microsoft's requirements and priorities into Zenity's roadmap, and work closely with Product and Engineering to shape what we build next.
• Bring insights back that define the future of Zenity's platform and AI security offerings.

Requirements

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Hands-on experience building with AI coding agents, such as Claude or Cursor, as part of your daily engineering workflow.
• Strong backend expertise in one or more of Python, Go, Node.js, or Java.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems and enterprise-scale applications.
• Experience designing and consuming APIs and integrating enterprise software systems.
• Strong software architecture and technical design skills.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP). Azure is a strong plus given the partner ecosystem.
• Excellent communication skills and real comfort working directly with technical stakeholders.
• Comfort working onsite as the technical face of Zenity.

Strong plus

• Background in cybersecurity, cloud security, governance, or enterprise SaaS.
• Experience building AI-powered applications, agentic systems, or AI governance solutions.
• Experience with Microsoft 365, Copilot, Power Platform, Azure AI Foundry, or Microsoft Fabric.
• Customer-facing engineering experience: Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Architecture, Professional Services Engineering, or Technical Consulting.
• Startup experience and comfort in fast-moving environments.

What We Look For At Zenity

• Proven ability to build, not just maintain, systems, processes, or relationships
• Comfort operating in evolving, fast-moving environments where the playbook is still being written
• Strong communication and collaboration skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Ownership mindset with accountability for outcomes, not just activity
• Experience in high-growth or venture-backed environments
• Exposure to AI, security, or emerging technology ecosystems

What Success Looks Like

You are an exceptional engineer first and foremost. You like being close to customers and solving real-world problems, and you thrive in ambiguity, navigating complex organizations without losing momentum. You move fluidly between writing production code, designing architecture, and advising senior technical stakeholders, and you measure your work by the outcomes you deliver for customers.

Why This Role/Zenity

• Help define the emerging category of AI security and governance.
• Work embedded with Microsoft, one of our most strategic partners.
• Solve genuinely hard problems at the frontier of AI adoption.
• Shape both customer success and product direction.
• Join a world-class engineering team building the future of secure AI.

Interview Process

Our interview process is designed to be transparent, conversational, and focused on real-world experience.

1. Recruiter Interview
2. Technical Assignment
3. Hiring Manager Interview
4. Director of Engineering Interview
5. CRO interview
6. Final interview with the Microsoft team

Zenity is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We enable enterprises to adopt AI agents securely and at scale, and that starts with building a team that reflects a wide range of perspectives and experiences. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

We're committed to creating an inclusive environment where talented people can do their best work, securely, confidently, and with impact.

Compensation

The base salary range for this role is $190,000 to $220,000. Final offer within the range depends on experience, skills, and interview performance. This role also includes equity and Zenity's full benefits package.