Forward Deployed Engineer - comp Security Clearance

Position: Forward Deployed Engineer - up to $500k comp with Security Clearance
Founding Forward Deployed Engineer

Location:

On-site – San Francisco (50–75% travel to customer sites)
Type:
Full-time | $200k–$500k + 1–3% Equity About the Role
My client is building security solutions for the largest infrastructure buildout in history: AI data centers. With $3M in recent seed funding and backing from security leaders at Anthropic, Deep Mind, Crowd Strike, and more, they work with government agencies and classified AI infrastructure to protect the most sensitive systems on Earth. They’re hiring a Founding Forward Deployed Engineer with government clearance to bridge the gap between internal engineering and external deployments.

This is a high-impact, field-facing engineering role for someone excited to take ownership of customer integrations, field deployment, and real-world implementation of mission-critical tech. What You’ll Be Doing
Integrate with government clients: work directly with government agencies, defense contractors, and classified AI facilities to deploy security solutions Deploy on-site: lead hands-on installation and configuration in secure environments like classified data centers and government facilities Bridge engineering and customer needs: gather requirements, understand constraints, and feed insights back to the product team Tackle integration challenges: adapt solutions to legacy systems, complex network topologies, and compliance frameworks Provide technical support and training: document procedures, support end-users, and train customer teams in classified environments Your Journey
Months 1–3:
Customer discovery, learning internal systems, and gathering government integration requirements Months 4–12:
Lead multiple deployments across secure government environments Beyond Year 1:
Grow into leadership for government integration efforts, with the opportunity to build and manage a team What They’re Looking For
2+ years of experience as a forward-deployed, integration, or customer-facing engineer U.S. Citizenship required Active or eligible for DoD Secret or Top Secret clearance Willingness to travel 50–75% to secure customer locations Strong communication and problem-solving skills Experience deploying systems in secure, regulated, or defense environments Tech Stack
Arista data center networking PyTorch (for ML) Xilinx FPGAs (Adaptive SoCs) Rust Formal verification Trusted execution environments (TEEs), confidential computing Why Join?
Shape the future of AI infrastructure security Join a seed-stage, high-ownership founding team Work in a mission-driven environment solving problems others can’t Competitive salary + meaningful equity